Wild Spiced Parkin Cake

This is a cake that for us was love at first taste and credit must go to genius foraging chef Liz Knight who passed the recipe on to our friend Mark, who passed it on to us. Originally made with ginger as the spice, it is the perfect vehicle to showcase our very own Scottish spice of dried hogweed seed. Not to be confused with its giant cousin, this super little plant is our very own hidden treasure of the hedgerows and really ought to become a national obsession.

Serves 6-8

Ingredients

1 egg

4 tbsp milk

200g butter, plus extra for greasing 200g Golden Syrup

85g treacle

85g soft brown sugar 250g self-raising flour 100g oatmeal

2 tbsp ground hogweed seeds

Method

Heat oven to 160°C.

Gently melt together the syrup, treacle, sugar and butter. Butter a deep 22cm baking tin and line with parchment. Beat the egg and milk together. Remove melted ingredients from the heat and stir in the oatmeal, hogweed and then the flour, stirring till smooth. Quickly beat in the egg and milk mixture.

Pour the mix into the tin and bake for approx 50 mins to 1 hour, or until the cake feels firm and is starting to crust on top. Cool in the tin then turn out and wrap in foil or cling film. It will keep for up to a week. This cake will benefit from a few days in the wrapping to allow the oatmeal to swell and take on a lovely sticky fudgy texture.