Two recipes from my family's cookbook. One recipe uses a cake mix to make a moist and lemony poppy seed cake, the other recipe is for a homemade poppy seed cake with a stripe of chocolate-cinnamon streusel. Both are keepers!
A 'scratch golfer' shoots par or better then jots quick notes onto a 'scratch pad'. To 'scratch the surface' is just the beginning while 'scratching a plan' brings one to an end. To 'raise some scratch' is to gather cash.
Why then is someone who cooks and bakes with basic ingredients a 'scratch cook'? Tis a puzzle.
Scratch cooks like me are taken aback when not-so-scratch recipes taste great. Last spring, my friend Ann sliced a moist lemony cake as the sweet ending for our book club. We savored each bite, pressing tines to plates to gather the last crumbs.
To my surprise, Ann’s recipe came from the pages of my own family’s cookbook. There I found two poppy seed cake recipes side by side, one starting with a cake mix, another made from scratch. No puzzle here, both cake recipes are winners.


HOMEMADE POPPY SEED CAKE
Time to table: 3 hours
- 3/4 cup poppy seeds
- 1/4 cup milk
- 3/4 cup sour cream
- 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
- 1/2 cup vegetable shortening (Crisco)
- 1-1/2 cups sugar
- 4 egg yolks & 4 egg whites
- 2-1/4 cups flour, fluffed to aerate before measuring
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- Pinch of table salt
-
STREUSEL
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
Preheat oven to 350F.
In a small bowl, stir together poppy seeds, milk and sour cream. In a large bowl, cream butter and shortening. Slowly add sugar and egg yolks. Beat for 8-10 minutes. In a bowl, stir together flour, baking soda and powder. In a bowl, stir together streusel ingredients. In a bowl, whip egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Alternating, blend flour and poppy seed mixtures into butter (that is, 1/3 flour, then 1/2 poppy, 1/3 flour, 1/2 poppy, 1/3 flour). Gently fold beaten egg whites into teh batter.
Spray a Bundt pan with cooking spray, preferably Baker’s Joy. Scoop 1/3 batter into pan, sprinkle with 1/2 streusel mixture, then another 1/3 batter, remaining streusel, remaining batter. Bake for an hour. Let cool 10 minutes, turn onto a rack to cool.

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