The parkin is in the oven

I have no idea how it's going to turn out, but this time it looks much more like something that needs two hours' cooking and ought to get springy in the middle when it's done -- neither of which the last version did.

I bought steel-cut oats, per minnehahaK's advice. The resulting mixture is awfully goopy, but I assume the oats will soak up the butter and sweet stuff.

And if gerisullivan is reading this, do you remember that tin of Lyle's Golden Syrup you gave me after the last time I tried parkin, back in 2000? (I thought it was more recently, but my Romance Exchange planner tells me otherwise.) Anyway, I finally used it tonight, only 13 years past the "best if used by" date. It looked fine, except for being somewhat crystallized on the bottom.

Further updates will no doubt follow after it emerges from the oven.

I don't think these were the right oats

My parkin has been in the oven for two and a half hours -- an extra half-hour. It's still sloshy rather than cake-ey. It's bubbling away in the oven, but it doesn't seem to be getting solid.

I'm debating between taking it out of the oven and seeing if it hardens up, and leaving it in another half-hour or so. At that point it has to come out of the oven, because I'm falling asleep. (I got up an hour early today so that Pat and I could go walking before her new Oriental rug arrived.)

I hate ruining expensive ingredients. I haven't had a total culinary failure in a long time, but this sure looks like it's shaping up to be one.

Edited to add: I just took it out of the oven, and it looks much the same. The problem seems to be that the oats didn't absorb any of the liquid. A poke with a toothpick to extract a couple oats shows that they're still solid and crunchy. Maybe something useful will happen overnight, as it cools. Maybe I had defective oats?