The Great British Baking Show celebrated its first ever “Autumn Week” on Netflix this week, asking the bakers to combine the cozy, comforting flavors of pumpkin, spice, and everything nice in various pies and cakes. However, for the Technical Challenge, judge Prue Leith threw the bakers a hyper-specific culinary curveball. Prue wanted the bakers to make a vegan parkin. The bonfire night specialty immediately stumped everyone in the tent except for last week’s Star Baker Gill Howard. “Oh, the joys of being Northern,” she joked in her Lancashire accent.”
Parkin — which really honestly sounds like it should be spelling “parking” — is a distinctly Northern England delicacy. While Gill was extremely familiar with it, going so far as to make a hybrid parkin carrot cake for her Showstopper, everyone else was stumped, if not disgusted. Dutch-born baker Christiaan de Vries politely lamented that the batter didn’t look particularly appetizing before 20-year-old Dylan Bachelet straight up incredulously asked Gill if people really even liked parkin.
“People like this. Yes, the people do like this, Dylan,” she replied in exasperation.
However, simply knowing what parkin is does not necessarily assure victory. Spoilers for the Technical Challenge in The Great British Baking Show “Autumn Week,” but because Prue wanted vegan parkin, the bakers had to use baking powder instead of eggs to get the bake to rise. Gill lost track of her baking powder and couldn’t remember if she put it in. When she came in last place for a flat parkin, it was obviously she had not.
So what exactly is parkin? Why is it specific to the north of England? Here’s everything you need to know about parkin, not parking, on The Great British Baking Show:
Parkin is gingerbread cake made with oats and treacle that is associated with Bonfire Night, aka the November 5 or Guy Fawkes Day, in Northern England. Different cities and counties in Northern England have different traditional variances to the parkin recipe. In Gill’s native Lancashire, it might be made with golden syrup instead of treacle, whereas it could have a more biscuit-y texture in Hull.
Basically the reason why parkin is beloved in the north of England and completely foreign to the south is that it’s an oat-based cake. Northern England historically had oats, not wheat, available for the masses to bake with. Elsewhere in England, the poor and middle classes were able to obtain wheat. No oats, no parkin.
Why is called parkin? No one knows. It certainly has nothing to do with parking cars as there are historic references to parkin as far back as the early 1700s.
Why is parkin baked on Bonfire Night? On November 5, Brits celebrate Bonfire Night, an evening celebration where local people gather together around a bonfire to burn Guy Fawkes in effigy. Spicy cakes are eaten, fireworks often go off, and it’s a mix of a harvest festival and the Fourth of July.
Guy Fawkes infamously tried to blow up Parliament on November 5, 1605 and Bonfire Night is a patriotic celebration intended to stick it to him and all would-be terrorists. But most Brits just associate it with cake and fireworks…and in the north, parkin.