Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake recipe

I went hunting for a Lemon and Poppy Seed cake recipe, having had a request from a hungry teenager for a ‘cake with poppy seeds in it’. I found several Orange and Poppy Seed cake recipes online, including the famous Nigel Slater recipe (recommended to me by Anna Koska during our interview earlier this month).

However, I couldn’t find an easy bake option, too many syrups, confits, and processes to follow, and it had to be Lemon and Poppy Seed cake (as we had no oranges on the fruit bowl, and like many of you, we are avoiding visiting shops on a whim at the mo).

Lemon and poppy seed cake recipe, makes two: one to eat, one for instagram

So I dug out an old recipe favourite of ours, a lemon drizzle cake with almonds, if you visit the KidsChaos blog, you’ll see HOW long ago we wrote that one up! Links to this, and the Nigel Slater recipe later, I don’t want to distract you from the epic recipe I’ve hashed together (and tried several times for you, to make sure it works!).

So here are your ingredients:

? Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake ?
(makes two; one large cake to eat, and one to photograph!)

350g Fairtrade caster sugar
350g organic butter
2 unwaxed lemons
6 free range eggs
200g self-raising flour
150g ground almonds (OMIT if allergies)
30g poppy seeds
Icing sugar to decorate

Instructions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180C/160C fan.
2. Line two loaf tins with unbleached parchment paper.
3. Beat together the caster sugar and the butter, and the finely grated zest of two unwaxed lemons.
4. Add a pinch of salt and beat in the eggs one at a time.
5. Sieve the self raising flour and fold in, add the ground almonds and 30g poppy seeds. (again, not essential if there’s a nut allergy in the house)
6. Pour into your lined tins.
7. Bake in the oven for about 40 mins, until your knife pulls out dry when you test it.
8. Leave it in the tin to cool, then ice accordingly.

Decorating the cake

Whilst the cakes are baking, we like to mix some sifted icing sugar with a small amount of the lemon juice until it makes a thick silky paste. When the cake is fully cool, drizzle the icing across the cake in zig zags…

Top Tip – don’t make the icing too runny or it won’t have the strong visual effect you’re looking for.

Dust lightly with icing sugar (use a small icing sugar sieve or shaker). Not too much, you don’t want to hide those zig zag lines! (see example at foot of this post of heavy handed teenage use of icing sugar… that’s the ‘eat now’ cake not meant for photographing…)

If you’ve a spare lemon, grate some of the zest over the cake, so that the delightful lemony-yellow confetti adds some joy to your cakes.

Oh have fun, enjoy, and if your lemon and poppy seed cake doesn’t all get eaten in one go, it will last for a few days in an airtight tin.

Original recipe adapted from the incredibusy teenagers over on https://kidschaos.com/lemon-drizzle-cake-ground-almonds/

Nigel Slater’s orange and poppy seed cake recipe appeared in The Guardian here.

Follow me on instagram.com/incredibusy for more fun stuff, and if you’d like to pin any of these photos go right ahead x

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