Tis the season for all those lovely Christmas flavours to be swirling around the house. So far I’ve made 9 Christmas puddings and two Christmas cakes. My refrigerator is groaning with cake and pudding. Two of the puddings and one of the cakes are gluten free for my dearly beloved and I and the rest are all gifts for family and the odd friend. I made a non gluten free version of Parkin for my end of year work party which went down well so I made another one for my husband that he could eat without gluten or the rolled oats. I was more than a tad concerned about what to substitute for the oats and settled on quinoa flakes as they looked very similar in structure.
First assemble all that you’ll need to bake with.
Ingredients.
200g butter
1 large egg
4 tablespoons milk
200g golden syrup
85g treacle
85g light brown sugar
100g quinoa flakes
250g gluten free self raising flour
1 tablespoon ground ginger
Heat your oven to 160C or a bit less if fan forced. Grease a deep 22cm/9in square cake tin and line with baking paper.
Gently melt the syrup, treacle, sugar and butter together until the sugar has dissolved.
Remove from the heat.
Mix together the quinoa flakes , the GF flour and ginger.
Stir in the syrup mixture, followed by the combined egg and milk (lightly beaten together).
Pour the mixture into your prepared tin and bake for 50 mins to an hour until the cake feels firm and a little crusty on top.
Cool in the tin then wrap in more baking paper and foil and keep for 3-5 days before eating if you can as it apparently becomes softer and stickier the longer you leave it, up to two weeks.
I had to eat this as it smelt so lovely. It worked really well using the substitute quinoa flakes. The flavour is the same as is the texture. Well worth making but I don’t know how your meant to leave it for a few days. That just won’t be happening 😂😂😂😂😂.
cathyandchucky 
Next year I’m breaking in lol. Have a great Xmas and New Year x
Drop in Kym! Get a free pudding 😃😃😃
I always adored Gran’s parkin. You have done her proud Pinkiii 🙂
It was tasty 😃
They eat it with cheese (Lancashire preferably) in the U.K.
Great recipe and I love your “ho! ho! ho!” bowl 🙂
So…a parkin is a ginger cake with oats in it? Is it Scottish?
I think it’s English Bernice. Yorkshire area I do believe. I’d say there’s a variety made in Scotland too as it is a type of gingerbread. It does use rolled oats and they really are important to the recipe, however I used quinoa flakes instead as the nearest substitute for my gluten free version and they also worked really well 😃
It looks moist and delicious. Belated New Year Greetings. Have a great weekend!