When I saw this lemon & poppy seed cake recipe, I was tempted to try it. Then my husband came home with a bag full of fresh organic Italian lemons, and I had no more doubts :-).
I love fresh lemons. I love their aroma and love to add them to quite anything. I’ve told you that I recently discovered couscous, where I use a lot of fresh lemon juice, so as with salmon and many other recipes.
Here in Italy you can see (at least in minor cities as mine) lemon trees really full of fruits during quite le whole year.
I have a lemon “mini” tree in a vase that already have 2 lemons. I do find the small plants so beautiful too, and I hope mine resists. I planted a Clementine in my small garden about 3 years ago, and it grew quite nothing. This year it has many new leaves, let’s hope it will finally grow. Somebody told me that fruit plants need a special environment made of certain other plants around and certain soils. Well, I’m giving it a try as I love clementines.
Let’s leave botanical aside and come back to this super tasty and simple recipe that, as soon as you give the first bite, its aroma of fresh lemon will take you to Italy 
I was inspired by the recipe found in this blog, and I made just a few little changes (it is not easy to find evaporated milk here and so I used yogurt)and I assure you will love this lemon poppy seed cake.
March 17th, 2015 – It became one of “our” recipes. I have prepared it so many times that I can’t say how many so many they are.
- dry ingredients:
- 200 g of flour
- 1 Tsp of baking powder
- ½ Tsp of salt
- 200 g of sugar
- 2 Tbsp of lemon zest
- 2 Tbsp of poppy seeds
- wet ingredients:
- 125 g of low fat yogurt
- 1 Tbsp of milk
- 2 eggs
- 5 Tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
- for the syrup:
- 80 g of sugar
- 4 Tbsp of lemon juice
- Turn on the oven 356°F/180°C.
- In a big bowl, mix the dry ingredients.
- In another bowl, beat the eggs lightly and mix all the other wet ingredients.
- Cover a 20x10cm (8x3in) pan with parchment paper.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones’ bowl and mix just until well combined (a few lumps are ok).
- Bake for 50 minutes.
- In the meanwhile put the sugar and lemon juice needed for the syrup into a small pan and let it boil until becomes a little dense, becoming a light syrup.
- When the cake is done, lift it from the pan using the parchment paper borders and put it on a rack to cool, yet with the paper.
- Using a skewer make holes in the cake.
- Pour the syrup spreading it on the top of the cake – part of it will penetrate into the holes you’ve just created.
- Buon appetito!
No Comments