Bonfire Night Food For Thought

With Bonfire Night fast approaching, there are two main areas for consideration. The first of course being fireworks and the second is delicious and warming food which will take you back to being a child yourself.

My recipe for Parkin was given to me by my grandmother when I was a little girl and super easy to make. Being a Northerner born and bred, I like to make cooking part of the fun of Bonfire Night but also to keep it simple with lots of flavour.

Parkin

Ingredients:

8oz butter/margarine (plus a little for greasing the tin)
1 large egg
4 tablespoons of milk
8oz of golden syrup
3 oz treacle
3oz of soft brown sugar
4oz porridge oats
6oz self-raising flour
1 rounded tablespoon of ground ginger

Method: Grease a 9-10 inch square tin. Heat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3.

Combine all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

Warm the milk slightly with the butter in a jug and add the golden syrup, treacle, egg and mix together carefully. Please be sure not to over-warm the milk to cook the egg!! Pour it all into the dry ingredients, stir together and pour the resulting mixture into the greased cake tin.

Bake for around 50 minutes to 1 hour until it feels firm and crusty on top. Cool and wrap in foil and place in airtight container for 3-days to 2 weeks. Cut into small squares and serve. This is very filling so not in big pieces. Below is a video i found on youtube called 'Let's Make Yorkshire Parkin' which is very useful.

Hand-Made Toffee Apples

This is a guaranteed winner with the children and easy to make too.

8 medium apples (preferably either cox, granny)
1 lb golden caster sugar
1 teaspoon vinegar
4 tablespoons of golden syrup
100 ml of water

Method: wash the apples in hot water to remove any wax if shop bought. If from the tree, just rinse in cold water. Dry well and remove stalks and insert either a lollypop stick or a wooden skewer.

Put the sugar into the pan with 100ml of water and put on a medium heat. Cook for 5-minutes until the sugar dissolves then add the vinegar and golden syrup. If you have a cooking thermometer boil to 140 degrees if not, test at stages by dropping a little into cold water and it should harden instantly to a crisp cracking stage. If still pliable, keep testing every couple of minutes. Once the toffee is ready, taking an apple at a time rotate in the toffee until thoroughly coated and leave on greaseproof to set. If the toffee gets too thick and hard to coat the apple, re-heat enough to ‘slacken’ the mixture and continue.

If you are doing more, I would recommend that you do in batches and whilst these are brilliant but they will not keep so best done on the day of the Bonfire. Below is a video i found on youtube which might help.

So, whatever the weather, have a great bonfire night and don’t forget that Epic Fireworks has the biggest range of consumer fireworks in the UK and we would be delighted to see you. Open 7-days a week, all year round we have something to suit every budget.