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Proper Yorkshire parkin was traditionally made with oatmeal, black treacle and ginger. It was good and solid, filled you up, stuck to your teeth and kept you warm. Just the thing for chilly nights waiting for the bonfire to blaze.

Overcome by waves of nostalgia and tradition, we've been hunting out parkin. Tricky. So tricky, we had to widen our search to include ginger cake, to see if there was anything with a bit of spice about it.

Did we find anything with as much spark and excitement as tonight's rockets?

Well, maybe...

CRACKLING SKYBURSTS

BAKER'S DELIGHT YORKSHIRE PAIN

Bonus marks for this because the pack featured a sepia photo from the Frank Sutcliffe collection to highlight its Yorkshire origins. Also one of the few that contained that traditional ingredient of oatmeal. A good, solid moist cake with a decent flavour.

PETER'S GINGER CAKE

One of the few from the north side of the Durham/Yorkshire border and a real star. This was rich and moist with a strong treacle and ginger taste and small chunks of stem ginger. Stuck very satisfactorily to teeth and left a good warming glow.

TAYLORS OF

HARROGATE

YORKSHIRE TEA GINGER CAKE

Ginger cake with black treacle and sultanas soaked in Yorkshire tea, plus little chunks of stem ginger. The result is a wonderfully moist cake with an excellent flavour and a really good bite.

BETTY'S

TRADITIONAL

YORKSHIRE PARKIN

This is the stuff - you could really taste the black treacle in this. Also made with oatmeal. This is a cake for grown-ups and the sort of cake that could keep you warm all winter.

SMALL SPARKLERS

JENKINS AND HUSWIT

GINGER CAKE

Perfectly acceptable but not very moist and not very gingery either.

MARKS & SPENCER GINGER CAKE

This apparently had some black treacle in it but although quite a good texture, it tasted overwhelmingly of golden syrup - very sickly.

MCVITIE'S GINGER CAKE

Moist and fairly gingery but a bit insubstantial and very sweet.

MORRISON'S PARKIN

More syrup than treacle, so very sickly. Not much of an ooh factor.

RUSSELL'S GINGER CAKE

Very dark and fairly moist but not very gingery.

DAMP SQUIBS

MRS CRIMBLE'S STEM

GINGER CAKE

No wheat flour. No eggs. No animal fat. Clearly, with a lack of such ingredients it was setting itself a real challenge and it didn't quite make it. This was a very solid, very dry cake. However, we did like all the great chunks of stem ginger, which we carefully picked off.

GRANDMA WILD'S

YORKSHIRE PARKIN

Very dry. Very sweet. Very boring.

WOODHEAD'S PARKIN

Rather dry and not very gingery.

We also found some biscuits calling themselves parkin - Scottish parkins from Aldi and parkin from Peters. Both were good biscuits - those from Peter's were wonderfully gingery - but can parkin really mean biscuits as well?

How to be card clever

OK, I admit it - I'm a card tart. But it's saving me a fortune. And if you haven't tried it yet, maybe you should. But only if you're sensible.

My wallet bulges with credit cards. I already have seven and any day now, I shall get another one.

Why? To get the six months' interest free period, of course.

More and more credit card companies are offering cards with nought per cent interest. Some are offering nine months and even more. If you are careful and sensible, you can make the system work for you very nicely, getting a new interest free card as soon as the special deal runs out on the first.

It's all bait of course. The credit card companies are no mugs. They offer you the deal in the hope that you WON'T be sensible - in which case they will make a lot of money out of you.

Don't let them.

I use the cards for big purchases to spread the cost. Why pay for a loan or enter into credit agreements when you can pay by card and pay no interest at all? It would be daft to do otherwise.

AND cards also offer you the chance to transfer the balance you owe on one card to another, for an interest free period. And yes, that does make sense - saves even more interest.

But it also piles up trouble. Because eventually, the debt has to be paid. Sorry. There is no credit card fairy. Without the nasty incentive of interest to pay, it's easy to let the bills mount up. And up. Until the day of reckoning finally comes - at which point, you could be in a very nasty mess.

Top accountancy firm Pricewaterhouse Cooper has predicted that these nought per cent interest deals can't go on and that at the very least, they will be limited to just a small number of customers.

So make the most of them while you can. But just be careful, won't you?

The cream

of ice cream

WE all know we love Carte D'Or ice cream. With all its fantastic flavours, the naughty-but-oh-so-nice snack is the perfect accompaniment to that weekend video. Now the label has gone all tropical with Carte D'Or Fruit & Fresh, a blend of ice cream with two-thirds yoghurt and fresh fruit. Tropical Fruit contains fresh mango, passion fruit and banana; Red Fruit, a medley of strawberries, raspberries and redcurrants and Yellow Fruit, a fusion of peach, pear, apple and apricot. Our tasters liked this even better than the original ice cream. It was tasty, light, slightly tart and very refreshing and left none of the slightly cloying ice cream aftertaste in the mouth. Available in all major supermarkets for £1.79 for 450ml.

If you like something a little richer - and more calorific - try the new Carte D'Or Crema di Mascarpone, which combines Carte D'Or ice cream with the Italian dessert cheese mascarpone. This is then swirled with red berry sauce and sprinkled with pistachio nuts. Simply gorgeous, say our tasters, and definitely far too good for the children! Around £2.79 for 900ml.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk

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