What Is Parkin? Yorkshire's Bonfire Night Cake Explained

On this page

1. What is parkin?
2. What is parkin made of?
3. Yorkshire parkin vs Lancashire parkin
4. Why is parkin eaten on Bonfire Night?
5. Where does parkin come from?
6. Parkin vs gingerbread and ginger cake
7. Why parkin gets stickier as it rests
8. How to eat parkin
9. Carbs in parkin's main ingredients
10. If you're cutting carbs
11. FAQs
12. Sources

If you grew up in Yorkshire or Lancashire, Bonfire Night probably smelled of fireworks, baked potatoes and a dark slab of parkin. If you didn't, you might be wondering what all the fuss is about. So, what is parkin? This guide explains what goes into it, how Yorkshire and Lancashire versions differ, why it belongs to 5 November, how it compares with gingerbread, and why it's better a few days after baking. If treacle is the part that puzzles you, our guide to whether black treacle is the same as molasses covers that.

What is parkin?

Parkin is a traditional gingerbread cake from northern England. Wikipedia describes it as a gingerbread cake traditionally made with oatmeal and black treacle. It's often associated with Yorkshire, but it's popular elsewhere too, notably in Lancashire. BBC Good Food's guide calls it a "dark, spicy, solid gingerbread made with oatmeal".

The oatmeal is what sets it apart. It gives parkin a coarse, slightly chewy crumb, while the treacle makes it very dark and gives it what Felicity Cloake, in the Guardian, calls a "bitter, almost liquoricey character". BBC Good Food names ground ginger as the real star. Recipes such as Cloake's and Dan Lepard's bake it in a square tin, ready to cut into thick squares.

Wikipedia notes that parkin is baked commercially throughout Yorkshire but is mainly made at home in other areas. It's traditionally eaten on Guy Fawkes Night (5 November) and on Yorkshire Day (1 August), and it's enjoyed throughout the winter months.

What is parkin made of?

Recipes vary from family to family, but the same handful of ingredients turns up in almost all of them. Wikipedia lists the principal ingredients of a Yorkshire parkin as oatmeal, flour, black treacle, fat and ginger. BBC Good Food adds brown sugar, golden syrup and eggs to the modern mix.

Based on Wikipedia's Parkin entry, BBC Good Food and Felicity Cloake's parkin testing in the Guardian. Checked 3 November 2026.

What kind of oats go in parkin?

Traditionally, oatmeal rather than porridge oats. In her 2017 Guardian test of parkin recipes, Felicity Cloake explains that oatmeal is made from groats that have been chopped, rather than rolled like the quicker-cooking porridge oats most of us buy. Her testers preferred medium oatmeal to coarse, which she found had a tendency to sink to the bottom. Our guide to whether porridge is the same as oatmeal explains the different UK oat grades.

Spices, fat and raising agents

Ginger is the essential spice, but Cloake found many recipes also use nutmeg, allspice or mixed spice. Older recipes used lard or dripping, and Wikipedia says modern ones use butter, margarine or rapeseed oil. Cloake notes that raising agents such as bicarbonate of soda were a Victorian addition, which is why the oldest, oatmeal-only recipes bake up flat and brittle rather than cakey.

Yorkshire parkin vs Lancashire parkin

Both counties claim parkin, and each has its own style. BBC Good Food says Yorkshire recipes generally use more oatmeal than flour, while Lancashire recipes tend to use more flour than oatmeal. Wikipedia adds that Lancashire parkin is generally made with golden syrup rather than the black treacle used elsewhere.

Based on BBC Good Food and Wikipedia's Parkin entry, which also notes that more treacle or brown sugar gives parkin a darker colour. Checked 3 November 2026.

There are local variations within counties too. According to Wikipedia, parkin in Hull and East Yorkshire has a drier, more biscuit-like texture than elsewhere. BBC Good Food's writer Carol Wilson mentions A Yorkshire Cookery Book, published in Wakefield in 1919, which lists 17 different parkin recipes.

Why is parkin eaten on Bonfire Night?

Parkin was linked to early November long before Guy Fawkes. Wikipedia, drawing on food historian Jennifer Stead, explains that parkin is closely related to tharf cake, an oat cake traditionally made straight after the oat harvest in the first week of November. The first two weeks of November also held several festivals, including All Saints' Day, All Souls' Day and Martinmas, which were marked with fires and special cakes.

When Bonfire Night began, marking the failure of Guy Fawkes' plot on 5 November 1605, it fell just days after those older celebrations, and Stead identifies the bonfire as the link between Guy Fawkes and parkin. By 1862, Wikipedia says, parkin and treacle toffee, with potatoes baked in the fire, had become the traditional foods of Guy Fawkes Night, and in Leeds 5 November became known as Parkin Night. BBC Good Food calls it Parkin Day.

Where does parkin come from?

Nobody knows exactly where the name comes from. Wikipedia says the origin of the word is unknown, and that the first published dated reference comes from 1728, in the West Riding of Yorkshire Quarter Sessions, when a woman named Anne Whittaker was accused of stealing oatmeal to make parkin. In the Guardian, Felicity Cloake quotes Laura Mason and Catherine Brown's The Taste of Britain, which says the name is possibly related to a diminutive of the name Piers.

The cake itself is older than the name. Its ancestor, tharf cake, was an unsweetened oat cake cooked on a griddle, and Wikipedia says "tharf" meant unleavened in Old English. BBC Good Food explains that oats were the main cereal grown in the north, and that ginger was the cheapest spice in days gone by.

Sweetness came later. Festive tharf cakes were sweetened with honey, and as treacle became plentiful from the 17th century it took honey's place. BBC Good Food says early parkins were made with dripping and no eggs, and that flour and sugar were added from the 18th century as they became cheaper. Cloake notes that golden syrup came on to the market in the 1880s and was widely used for at least part of the treacle after that.

Parkin vs gingerbread and ginger cake

Parkin is a kind of gingerbread, but not all gingerbread is parkin. Wikipedia describes gingerbread as a broad category of baked goods, typically flavoured with ginger, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon and sweetened with honey, sugar or molasses. It ranges from a moist loaf cake to forms nearly as crisp as a ginger snap. In the US, the soft kind is sometimes called gingerbread cake or ginger cake. Wikipedia's gingerbread entry describes parkin as a form of soft gingerbread cake made with oatmeal and treacle.

Based on Wikipedia's Gingerbread and Parkin entries. "Ginger cake" is the soft, loaf-style gingerbread; "biscuits" means gingerbread biscuits such as ginger snaps. Checked 3 November 2026.

The simplest way to tell them apart is the oats. Cloake points out that some well-known parkin recipes leave the oatmeal out altogether, which she calls a shame because it gives the cakes their distinctive rough, chewy texture.

Why parkin gets stickier as it rests

Parkin is one of the few cakes that's better a few days after baking. Wikipedia says it's baked to a hard cake but becomes moist, and sometimes sticky, with resting. Its history section explains why: molasses (treacle) is hygroscopic, meaning it draws in moisture, so cakes made with it were baked hard and softened again in storage, just like the old festive honey cakes.

BBC Good Food advises keeping home-made parkin in an airtight tin for at least three days before cutting, so that it softens and mellows, and says it keeps well in an airtight tin for up to two weeks. Cloake goes further, saying parkin carries on getting better for some weeks and that her recipe can be stored in a tin for up to three weeks. BBC Good Food also says it's traditional to slightly underbake parkin so the centre stays sticky.

How to eat parkin

Parkin needs nothing more than a knife, but there are a few traditional ways to serve it:

• With a glass of milk. That's how Dan Lepard says it's best eaten, in his Guardian piece on a 100-year-old parkin recipe.
• Buttered. Cloake mentions Julie Duff's suggestion of spreading butter on top of warm parkin.
• As a pudding. BBC Good Food suggests serving it with stewed apples, pears or plums and a dollop of whipped cream.
• Around the bonfire. Carol Wilson enjoys hers after a baked potato while the fireworks go off.

Lepard's 1907 recipe also gives a glimpse of its history as a shop-bought treat: he notes that parkin then sold for eight old pence a pound.

Carbs in parkin's main ingredients

CoFID, the UK's official food composition tables, doesn't have an entry for parkin itself, so the nearest finished cake is homemade gingerbread. The table below shows that entry alongside the main parkin ingredients, per 100g. Almost all of the carbohydrate in a parkin comes from the oats, flour, treacle, syrup and sugar.

CoFID 2021: Gingerbread, homemade (11-1079); Treacle, black (17-826); Syrup, golden (17-065); Porridge oats, unfortified (11-788, CoFID's nearest entry to oatmeal); Flour, wheat, white, plain, soft (11-886). UK carbohydrate figures don't include fibre. Checked 3 November 2026.

Homemade gingerbread isn't an exact match for parkin, but it gives a sense of scale. Cloake's perfect parkin, for example, uses 120g treacle, 80g golden syrup, 175g soft dark brown sugar, 200g wholemeal flour and 200g medium oatmeal to make 16 slices.

If you're cutting carbs

A true parkin is built on oatmeal, flour, treacle, syrup and brown sugar, so there's no way to cut the carbs in the traditional recipe without changing what it is. If you'd still like the warm, spiced flavours of Bonfire Night, a few of our products cover parts of it.

For a quick gingery cake, our Keto Gingerbread Mug Cake Mix is made with almond flour and coconut flour and spiced with ginger, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. You add an egg and a tablespoon of melted butter, then microwave it for a minute.

If you bake your own spiced recipes, our Brown Erythritol & Stevia Blend is made from erythritol, stevia glycosides and caramel, and its product page says it swaps 1:1 for brown sugar. It won't replace the treacle or golden syrup, though, which bring the stickiness as well as the flavour.

And if it's the warm, oaty side of parkin you miss, our Keto Porridge (Original) has no oats in its ingredients. It's made with milled flaxseeds, chia seeds, desiccated coconut, chicory root fibre and organic coconut flour, sweetened with erythritol and stevia. You add milk or water and microwave it for 60 seconds.

Product details are as shown on each product page. Free delivery on orders over £30.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Wikipedia. Parkin (cake) (definition, regional styles, ingredients, etymology, tharf cake, Bonfire Night history, resting) and Gingerbread (what counts as gingerbread). Checked 3 November 2026.
• Wikipedia. Bonfire Night (5 November 1605). Checked 3 November 2026.
• BBC Good Food. What is parkin? by Carol Wilson (ingredients, history, Yorkshire vs Lancashire, storage and serving). Checked 3 November 2026.
• The Guardian. How to make the perfect parkin by Felicity Cloake (2 November 2017; oatmeal, sweeteners, spices, raising agents, storage). Checked 3 November 2026.
• The Guardian. 100-year-old parkin by Dan Lepard (3 November 2007). Checked 3 November 2026.
• Public Health England / Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. Composition of foods integrated dataset (CoFID) 2021 (codes 11-1079, 17-826, 17-065, 11-788 and 11-886). Checked 3 November 2026.
• Groovy Keto product pages: Keto Gingerbread Mug Cake Mix, Brown Erythritol & Stevia Blend and Keto Porridge (Original) (ingredients, method, pack sizes and allergens). Checked 3 November 2026.