Poppy Cake, Poppy Pie, Poppy seeds for You and I
Yeah, I know it’s not grammatical, but it rimes.
Oh, the cautions about poppy seeds. I’ll cover that in a moment.
Lots of cultures use poppy seeds, but in my Polish background, Eastern Europe seems to be the best place to find the most use.
Memories are often misplaced or details forgotten and the remaining bits mashed into one memory of a thing that never was. Eh, whaddayagonnado? My memories are almost certainly mash-ups, but the emotions and good tidings are real, even if the details are confused.
German sweets are well populated with poppy seeds. My Polish ancestors, being rather committed Catholics, would have made use of them for the Vigil Supper dishes.
I’ve been served egg noodles tossed with butter and poppy seeds, poppy seed cakes and treats, and spiced poppy seed paste filling. So well has poppy seed come to mean special that the onion poppy seed rolls at my first-ever professional cooking job in Southfield, MI still, to this very day, hold a high bar for excellence. I’ve tried many times over as many years, and while I’ve not ever twinned them, I’ve come very close.
Don’t Get High
Worry not: unless you are due for a drug test and ate an entire slice of poppy 
seed cake, you are probably fine. Since I am by no measure qualified to advise officially, prudence is the better part of caution. What that means is the fancy drug test might show positive for opiates but you’ll have had not one speck of the high that drug can offer. Drugs are not my bag; adults have choices; drug use is not a jailing offense as far as I’m concerned. Moving on.
Is there a safe amount? That’s a good question without a clear cut answer. The USADA, the US Anti-Doping Agency, writes that they “cannot predict the amount of poppy seeds you can eat and remain below the testing threshold set by [World Anti-Doping Agency]. . . . However, it may be possible to exceed the morphine threshold by eating foods with poppy seeds and USADA can’t predict how long morphine or morphine metabolites from poppy seeds will stay in your system. The most conservative approach would be to avoid poppy seeds a few days before and during competitions.”[1] Drug testing agencies often ask participants to complete a survey to indicate if poppy seeds might be a cause for a positive.
Gather Your Poppy Seeds While Ye May… Or Not
Opium poppies, Papaver somniferum, is the most common source of the seeds we use and see in and on cakes and these are the seeds you buy at the store. They are sourced almost entirely from Turkey or the Netherlands.
We are familiar with the common blue-grey, very tiny, seeds. In countries such as India, they make much use of white poppy seeds. As I read it, the cultivar, the kind of poppy, determines the color of the seed. In all cases, the morephine content is nearly nil. However, there’s a catch, and it can be a big one. As stated in this Michael Pollan piece, opium poppies are illegal everywhere in the US. Now, just to be sure, check your community. Just because you can buy them from a catalog and they’ll take your money and send them to you does not mean growing them is okay.
As near as I can determine, only opium poppies produce seeds worth eating. That conclusion is reached by the stunning absence of information about seeds from any poppy other than the opium poppy. So, grow field poppies because they are pretty, but be ready to click on through for poppy seeds.
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They Are Not Just For Garnish
Poppy seeds are attractive on a bagel, but the real beauty of the seeds lies in
the flavor. Yes, I do like lemon poppy seed muffins, but I really really like poppy seed rugelach or Hamantaschen. Yum Yum!
Making your own paste isn’t very difficult, but does require specialized tools: a poppy seed grinder which has pretty much one job, or a proper coffee grinder with adjustable grind coarseness. That miniature coffee bean smasher which looks like a teeny tiny food processor is not at all a proper spice grinder. It has no ability to be consistent and such things are very important in spice grinding.
The basics are the seeds, ground, and milk, honey, acid (lemon juice) salt and flavor. For every cup of seeds, pre grinding, add to the ground seeds half a cup of honey (agave or your choice of sweetener) and milk (almond or soy, but some liquid with flavor) and a wee bit of sugar, salt and acid. Add all ingredients to a pan, put to heat and bring to a boil while stirring very often. The mixture will start to thicken in less than 5 minutes. Remove from the heat, allow to cool and store in the refrigerator. Use it quickly, 3-4 days.
Poppy seeds are excellent in a honey dressing or in cookies or cakes. I am partial to scones and muffins.
They are also puny, itty-bitty seeds. And they have a curious outside texture much like that of a morel mushroom.
Lemon Poppy Seed Muffin
Yes, that muffin has blue sprinkles. So it goes with daughters, or at least mine. And a glaze. These are as easy as any muffin and just so good. A good crumb, nicely dense and yummy while still warm.
Ingredients
Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
- 123 g All Purpose flour
- 3 g Baking powder
- 98 g Granulated sugar
- 103 g Unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 47 g Sour cream
- 2 each Large eggs
- 2 t Fresh squeezed lemon juice 10 ml on a medicine cup
- 1 each Lemon, zested
- 17 g Poppy seeds
- 1 g Salt
Instructions
Mix the muffins
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Place butter to melt, slowly, on the stove top. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray your muffin tins or place paper cups inside each cup of the tin.
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Scale the sugar, poppy seeds, and lemon zest into a bowl. Sift the flour and baking powder and salt into another bowl. Crack the eggs into a small bowl.
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When the butter is cool to the touch, and still melty, add it to the sugar mixture. Whisk together until it is homogenous. Add the two eggs, the sour cream and lemon juice and whisk again. It will come together as a stiff and shiny mixture. This is good.
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Pour the egg mixture onto the flour and fold the mixture together, taking care not to over mix the batter.
Approximately 10 good deep folds should be enough to bring the batter together. Muffin batter needn't be mixed smooth.
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Allow the batter to stand 5 minutes before scooping into the prepared tins.
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Scoop each muffin cup half full. These do come up quite well. They will not peak but instead ooze out. Not a bad thing, but good to know. Over filled tins will make a mess on the bottom of your oven. If you are unsure, bake the muffins on a sheet pan to catch any mess and make cleaning easier.
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Garnish the muffins with purple and blue sugar, or don't. The muffins don't need it, but the kids might.
Bake them for 20 minutes, or until they are firm to the touch.
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When done, remove to a rack and allow to cool 5 minutes before removing. When they are cool, remove them from the tin to the rack on which the pan rested.
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For the glaze, add 1/2 C of powdered sugar to a bowl, pour in 1 t of lemon juice and whisk. It will not come together yet, so add small portions of lemon juice and whisk until it is the consistency you wish. I used the teaspoon of lemon juice and some half and half to keep the lemon flavor subtle and add a bit of richness.
Recipe Notes
This recipe can easily be doubled. As it is, I made 6 muffins with a wee bit remaining. I baked that in a small (4" teflon cake pan) and that was the baker's treat. I shared mine with the kiddo.
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[1] https://www.usada.org/can-poppyseeds-cause-a-positive-drug-test/
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