Poppy Seed Cake

Poppy Seed Cake with chocolate glaze – a secret ingredient makes it moist and flavorful; so good and so easy! It works both as a coffee cake and as a festive cake. In any case, I can never get enough of it!

You will get the idea how good this cake is when I tell you that I made it 3 times with intent to publish it on my blog, but it always disappeared before I had chance to take a picture of it.

When I was very young my mom collected several recipes for this cake. We tried them all and voted unanimously that this one was the best one. I guess the secret ingredient is apricot jam that goes into the batter. It keeps the cake moist and provides nice flavor. I know, some of you will ask me whether you can substitute apricot jam with some other kind of jam. I can tell you right now: I don’t know. I’ve never tried any other kind simply because this one was so perfect. I’m not sure how other kinds of jam would impact the flavor of the cake so I didn’t experiment with it, but you certainly can.

I liked flavors of lemon zest and rum in other recipes, so I added them, too. I use less oil then original recipe as poppy seeds contain enough fat themselves.

And also, I spread the top of the baked cake with a thin layer of apricot jam, before I pour my Secret Foolproof Chocolate Glaze over it. The reason is because the cake is very porous and it will soak up your glaze if you don’t put some kind of barrier in between.

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Poppy Seed Cake

Servings: 13 x 9 inch cake

Author: Kitchen Nostalgia

Ingredients

• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 2 cups milk
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups ground poppy seeds
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 2 Tbsp apricot jam
• 3/4 cup oil I use sunflower oil
• zest of 1 lemon
• 2 Tbsp rum
• CHOCOLATE GLAZE:
• cup about 1/4 apricot jam
• 3 oz chocolate 100 g, I used 43 % cocoa
• 3 oz vegetable fat or margarine 100 g

Instructions

1. Mix eggs with sugar until bubbles start appearing.
2. Add remaining ingredients and mix briefly until incorporated. The batter will be thin, almost thinner then pancake dough.
3. Pour the batter into oiled and floured 13 x 9 inch (33 x 23 cm) baking pan and bake for 15 minutes at 350 F (175 C). Lower the temperature to 300 F (150 C) and bake for another 20-30 minutes or until wooden skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.
4. Take the cake out of the oven and let cool completely in the pan.
5. GLAZE:
6. Smear thin layer of apricot jam over the cake.

7. Melt vegetable fat and chocolate over double boiler. Whisk until smooth and pour over Poppy Seed Cake. Let cool.