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Squares of dark, sticky Yorkshire parkin in a tin lined with baking paper
Photo: Spider.Dog, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (resized)

Pastry

Yorkshire Parkin

A dark, sticky ginger cake from the north of England, made with oatmeal, black treacle and golden syrup, and traditionally eaten on Bonfire Night. It comes out of the oven firm, then softens and gets stickier over a few days, and keeps for a week or so in a tin.

  • Serves 16
  • Makes 16 squares
  • Hands-on 20 min
  • Bake 1–1¼ hrs
  • Rest 3–5 days before cutting
  • Keeps a week or so in a tin
  • British (Yorkshire)

Oatmeal, treacle and “Parkin Night”: a little history ↓

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 150°C (130°C fan). Butter a 20 cm square cake tin at least 5 cm (2 in) deep and line the base and sides with baking parchment.

  2. Set a medium saucepan on your scales and weigh the 100 g of black treacle and 150 g of golden syrup straight into it (warming the tins in a bowl of hot water first makes them pour more easily). Add the 125 g of butter and 100 g of dark brown sugar.

  3. Warm the pan over a low heat, stirring now and then, until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Do not let it boil. Take it off the heat and leave it to cool for 5 minutes.

  4. Meanwhile, mix the 225 g of medium oatmeal, 125 g of self-raising flour, 2 tsp of ground ginger, 1 tsp of mixed spice and the salt in a large bowl. Beat the egg with the 45 ml of milk.

  5. Pour the warm syrup mixture into the dry ingredients and stir well, then stir in the egg and milk to make a smooth, fairly loose batter with no dry pockets.

  6. Scrape the batter into the tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes, without opening the door for the first 45 minutes. It is ready when it is firm in the middle and a skewer pushed into the centre comes out with only a few moist crumbs. A slight dip in the middle is normal.

  7. Leave the parkin in the tin for 30 minutes, then lift it out by the paper and let it cool completely on a wire rack.

  8. Wrap the cold parkin, still in its paper, in more parchment and foil, or put it in an airtight tin, and leave it for 3 to 5 days before cutting it into 16 squares. It goes from firm to soft and sticky as it rests. It keeps for a week or so in the tin (up to two weeks if well wrapped).

Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.

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Chef’s notes

  • Medium oatmeal is oats chopped into small pieces rather than rolled flat, and it gives parkin its slightly gritty, dense bite. If you can only find porridge oats, pulse them briefly in a food processor first. Fine oatmeal gives a smoother, more cake-like parkin.
  • Yorkshire or Lancashire? Both counties claim parkin. Yorkshire versions tend to use more oatmeal and darker black treacle; Lancashire versions often use more flour and more golden syrup. For a darker, less sweet cake, swap 50 g of the golden syrup for more black treacle.
  • Why wait? Straight from the oven parkin is firm and quite dry. Treacle, syrup and brown sugar draw moisture from the air, so over a few days the cake softens and turns sticky. Cut it on the day only if you like it firm.
  • To weigh treacle and syrup without the mess, weigh them straight into the saucepan, or rub the spoon with a little oil first.
  • Serve it in squares from the tin as it is, with a cup of tea, or warm with custard as a pudding.

A little history

Parkin is a gingerbread made with oatmeal and black treacle that comes from the north of England. It is most often linked with Yorkshire but is just as popular in Lancashire, and it is traditionally eaten on Bonfire Night, 5 November.

Oats rather than wheat were the main grain in much of the north, which is why oatmeal is at the heart of the cake. Black treacle (molasses, a by-product of refining sugar) arrived in England in the 17th century with imported sugar, and as it became plentiful it took the place of honey as the sweetener.

Nobody knows where the name parkin comes from. The earliest dated record usually quoted is from 1728, when a woman named Anne Whittaker was accused at the West Riding Quarter Sessions of stealing oatmeal to make parkin.

In West Yorkshire and southern Lancashire parkin belongs to Bonfire Night. The food historian Jennifer Stead traced the link to the bonfire itself: early November had long been a time for fires and festival cakes. By the 19th century parkin and treacle toffee, with potatoes baked in the fire, had become the traditional food of the night, and in Leeds 5 November was known as Parkin Night.

Bonfire Night marks the failure of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament on 5 November 1605. Guy Fawkes, the plotter found guarding the gunpowder, was born in York in 1570. An Act of Parliament made 5 November a day of thanksgiving, and it stayed in force until 1859.

Sources for these notes

For the history and the notes on this page.

How this recipe was developed

A new page for Bonfire Night. We compared the five recipes below, from BBC Good Food’s quick version to Delia’s slow-baked oatmeal parkin, and wrote our own in grams with US cups.

  • More oatmeal than flour. BBC Good Food notes that Yorkshire parkins use more oatmeal than flour. Delia uses about 2 parts oatmeal to 1 of flour, Countryfile’s Elizabeth Guy 2 to 1, BBC Good Food far less. Ours has 225 g oatmeal to 125 g self-raising flour.
  • Black treacle and golden syrup. Every recipe melts the sweeteners with the butter and sugar without boiling. Delia uses 225 g syrup to 50 g treacle; the traditional Yorkshire recipe uses treacle alone. We use 150 g syrup and 100 g treacle for a dark but not bitter cake.
  • A low oven. Delia bakes at 140°C for 1½ hours, BBC Good Food at 160°C (140°C fan) for 50 minutes to an hour in a larger tin. For a 20 cm square tin we bake at 150°C (130°C fan), gas 2, for 1 to 1¼ hours.
  • Rest before cutting. All five say parkin improves with keeping: BBC Good Food at least three days and up to two weeks; the Yorkshire recipe a week in a tin. We say 3 to 5 days before cutting, and a week or so in the tin.

Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 1 November 2026):

This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.

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Shopping list for 16 portions

Dairy & eggs

Baking

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