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is often known as Yorkshire parkin, and is sometimes eaten on Bonfire Night.

If you’ve never tasted it, try to imagine a sticky, oaty gingerbread which simply has to be eaten slowly.

Isobel baked it in the kitchen of 25 Library Terrace in 1911, and both Annie and Georgia used it to great effect as the years passed, either to silence their visitors, or to create a situation where their potential lodgers felt compelled to speak to avoid an awkward silence.

There are many recipes online for parkin, and they are all slightly different.

This is mine.

Preheat your oven to 130C if it’s a fan oven, or 140C for conventional.

You’ll need what used to be called a 2 pound loaf tin which measures about 21cm x 11cm.

If you have greaseproof paper liners for the tin, that’s a help.

Ingredients

60g salted butter

50g dark soft brown sugar

40g golden syrup

85g treacle

110g medium oatmeal

50g self-raising flour

1 teaspoon ground ginger

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5 teaspoons nutmeg

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5 teaspoons mixed spice

1 egg

25ml milk

Method

Put the syrup, treacle, butter and sugar into a pan and melt them over a low heat.

The mixture needs to melt, not bubble.

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

Pour the treacle mixture over the dry ingredients and stir until blended.

Beat the egg and milk together and add to the bowl.

Stir well.

Pour into the lined tin.

If you don’t have a paper liner, grease the tin well and sprinkle a little flour in it to create a mock non-stick surface.

Bake for 55 minutes.

The parkin will rise a little, but really not very much.

This doesn’t mean it’s not cooked.

It should feel firm(ish) when you press the top of it.

All ovens are different, and if you feel the parkin needs a little longer, go for it.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for half an hour.

Turn out. When completely cold, wrap in foil and store in a tin.

Notes

Make the basic recipe first, and then play with it once you have an idea of how the mixture should feel.

It will not be as stiff as normal cake mixture, and may seem quite runny.

I prefer salted butter.

If you use unsalted, you might want to add a pinch of salt to the dry ingredients.

You need a total of 125g golden syrup and treacle.

The proportions are up to you.

I prefer to make it with more treacle and less syrup because I like the slightly burnt ‘edge’ this gives.

You may prefer dark muscovado sugar to dark soft brown.

Muscovado retains the molasses so the flavour will be more treacley.

However it’s also a bit more moist. Make the base recipe first before experimenting.

Isobel would have used Allinson’s flour.

I have also tried it with gluten-free self-raising flour and it works pretty well.

Most parkin recipes (and I have looked at a lot of them) ask for a miserly amount of ground ginger.

I add at least 2 teaspoons, sometimes more, but I’ve only used 1 teaspoon in this foundation recipe.

I like nutmeg in my parkin.

if you don’t like it just leave it out.

Play with the spices to make the parkin your own.

If you want to make a double quantity, I would use two loaf tins rather than one 20cm square tin.

can be quite reluctant to rise in a square tin, I find.

And making a smaller quantity means it’s more fun (and less of a commitment) to play with the balance of spices.

This is what you might call a foundation recipe.

Please experiment. Add sultanas or crystallised ginger.

Vary the spices and try a different syrup-to-treacle ratio.

Make it your own.

The crucial thing to remember is that parkin is much better after being stored for five days in an airtight tin.

It becomes gloriously sticky, and even more of a useful conversation stopper.

If you can keep it for ten days, even better.

It’s also very, very good with a chunk of strong cheddar cheese.