EY UP!

As my love affair with all Yorkshire baking continues to grow. I chose to publish this week a reight bobby dazzler of a recipe called Moggy cake.

If you’re not a Tyke from God’s own county of Yorkshire, you may not be too familiar with Moggy.

You may also feel a little alarmed as the word Moggy in the West Riding of Yorkshire is also a familiar name for a non-pedigree cat or kitten.

Reassuringly, I can tell you there are no cats involved in the making of this Moggy cake – phew, we don’t have to wear our trousers at half-mast!

Moggy cake is, in fact, a ginger cake unlike the rib-sticking Parkin us Yorkshire folks tend to eat around the bonfire on a parky plot night to keep us going.

Moggy is made without the oats, so that means it’s a lot lighter, making it a more sponge-like cake allowing extra room for a few more hearty bangers and Parkin pigs which helps to stop the teeth from chattering after the firework display and silencing dad’s rumbling tum!

Moggy cake has been noshed in Yorkshire for hundreds of years and can be eaten as ‘a cake with a brew or better still with lashings of piping hot custard dolloped over it with stewed rhubarb.

But unlike Parkin, you can also give in to willpower with this recipe without the mellow four-day wait – you can guzzle this ginger cake as soon as it comes out of the oven.

For me, it does feel a very Yorkshire sort of cake, which might upset a few minging connoisseurs faffing around with the recipe making them mardy and narky.

But it’s so simple and straightforward to make, it lacks any presentation, and by ‘eck it does taste grand at the back end of the year!

I suppose as the saying goes ‘’where there’s muck, there’s brass’’, and if you find yoursen’ spending the afternoon working in the fields pulling up spuds and carrots or chipping coal out of the pit, Moggy will always see you through without you flaggin’.

It does also get bonus points from me for having the ingredients in most regular home-bakers’ kitchen cupboards, saving you a bob or two.

There are some variations to the recipe I must point out – some have treacle in, some do not. Some have ginger, with others don’t.

Personally I feel a true traditional Yorkshire Moggy cake should always be similar to our classic Parkin, but without the oats.

It must always include treacle and ginger for a lighter texture and peppery hot flavour to warm our cockles.

A sound word in the lug’ole – do go easy on the milk and don’t use a loaf tin, as a slab of cake to cut up on the kitchen table is always a tradition in Yorkshire while drinking weak, mashed tea!

If not, sling your hook, put your coit on and get on yer bike, this recipe has not popped its clogs just yet!