I don't think these were the right oats

[carbonel]

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?

Comments

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Maybe you can spoon it into a bowl, pour a little milk on it, and eat it for breakfast? It sounds like something that should taste really good if you can just remove from your mind your idea of what it was intended to be.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I'm sure K. was right about not using Quaker, but I wonder whether one is supposed to process the steel-cut oats in some way for this recipe. I often have oatmeal from steel-cut oats for breakfast, and they aren't terribly absorbent.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Synchronicity. I'm not sure I had ever heard of "parkin" before, and today two people on my flist have been making it. Maybe you and beckyzoole should talk.

[carbonel]

Not entirely coincidental, since both of us know it's associated with Guy Fawkes' Day, which (AYKB) is November 5.

I will post to beckyzoole's LJ.