Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake

Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake

nb: Recipe taken from New Zealand Womens Weekly



4 Tbsp poppy seeds
1/4 cup of milk
Juice of one lemon
200g of butter - softened
Rind of one lemon - finely grated
1 cup of caster sugar
3 Eggs
2 1/4 cups of flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup sour cream or milk

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. Grease a 25 cm cake tin (or loaf tin). Soak poppyseeds in lemon juice and milk for 10 minutes.
• Beat butter, lemon rind and sugar until pale and creamy. Add the eggs, mixing well after each one is added.
• Sift flour and baking powder into a larger bowl. Add half the butter mixture, mix then add the other half. Add the poppy seeds with its milk and the sour cream/or additional milk.
• Spoon cake mixture into prepared tin and cook for 45-50 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.

There are also lemon flavoured icings and syrups that can go with this cake, but given that I added double the required lemon juice and rind, I hardly thought it needed more lemon flavour, and it still tastes fantastic.
This is one of those recipes that reminds me of food served during tea parties in the Regency and Victorian period that make me reminisce of my 50/50 English and Scottish heritage. For something thats essentially cake, it tastes really refreshing as weird as that sounds, which I suppose comes from the lemons, and while eating a slice I hardly felt as if I was eating something with butter and sugar in it as it was so light and moist.
So my husband came home after a hard days work of overseeing spoilt and annoying prep boys to find the kitchen a mess, our bedroom and living room a mess, but oh hang on a minute! I made a cake to make up for it! I gave him a slice which I saw him sniff appreciatively and I never saw him chew it but I did see him licking his lips. I take that meaning it disappeared into his stomach and I have better wrap up the rest for other occasions (I always hope to share my baking with visitors, but they typically get rationed when we've run out of ice cream).

Its a cheap and easy recipe and of course another excuse to happily rummage through my mother's lemon tree.