Vanilla poppy seed cake Mákos Pite

As long as you have a packet of poppy seeds on hand, this is an easy winter store cupboard cake. You need to grind the black poppy seeds with  a spice or coffee grinder before making the creamy poppy seed paste for the filling. A very popular pie-shaped (or square tin shaped) cake all over Eastern Europe, Germany, Austria and a really great afternoon treat with your tea or coffee. This is made with a quick shortcrust pastry and a creamy vanilla and lemon scented sweet poppy filling. Add dried fruit to the filling if you wish, sultanas, prunes, cherries or small pieces of quince jelly are delicious mixed in. Serve with a dollop of creme fraiche or whipped cream.

For the pastry:

300g plain or wholemeal flour

150g butter, cut into cubes

pinch of salt

2 tbsp sour cream or creme fraiche

For the filling:

150g ground black poppy seeds

50g sugar

50g semolina

200ml milk

1 tsp vanilla extract or scraped out seeds of a vanilla pod

grated zest of a lemon

1 egg white

1tbsp sultanas

1 egg yolk for glazing

Make the shortcrust pastry quickly by putting all ingredients into a food processor and mixing until a pastry ball is formed. If you are doing it by hand, crumble the cold butter and the flour together between your fingers until you get a fine crumble texture. Add the salt and sour cream and knead into a firm dough. Make the filling by heating the milk with the sugar and vanilla until almost boiling. Take it off the heat and add the ground poppy seeds, semolina, lemon zest, sultanas, stir until well mixed. Let it cool to room temperature. Beat the egg white until firm peaks form then gently fold into the poppy mix. Preheat the oven to 180C. Divide the pastry into two and roll out the first one to the shape of your greased or lined tart case or baking tin. I used a 24cm loose bottom tart case. Place the pastry in the tin, pour in the filling and roll out the other pastry to cover the filling. Press down along the edges and cut the excess pastry off neatly. Brush the top with the egg yolk and bake for about 40 minutes or until all the pastry and filling is cooked, check this with a wooden skewer. Let it cool and dust with icing sugar.   

Christmas poppy seed roll Mákos Beigli

As you wouldn't have Christmas without szaloncukor it's also traditional to have these sweet yeasty bread rolls filled with sweet creamy poppy seed or walnut paste. They are very popular around Christmas (Karácsony) and Easter (Húsvét) and generally any celebration times in the whole of Eastern Europe and also in Jewish cuisine. Having spent the past week at home with a sick toddler while desperately hoping to get fit for our fast approaching Christmas trip to Australia - to lift the Christmas spirits I had to make this Mákos Beigli and it turned out lovely. There is much anxiety around beigli making, I didn't find it difficult or time consuming and this was the first time I made it - my Mum has always done it for the whole family, including vast quantities of frozen supplies for us in the UK if we happened to spend the holidays here :-) I have based it on the tried and tested Horváth Ilona recipe, only changed a couple of things to make it quicker and easier for the dough to rise. This quantity makes 2 large or 4 medium size rolls.

For the dough:

500g plain flour

250g butter

2 eggs

50g caster sugar

20g fresh yeast (or 7g dried yeast, can add straight to dry ingredients)

200ml milk

pinch of salt

For the filling:

300g black poppy seed

200g sugar

300ml milk

vanilla pod (seeds scraped out) or few drops of vanilla extract

grated zest of a lemon

50g semolina

handful of sultanas soaked in a splash of dark rum

To make the dough sift the flour into a bowl with the salt, add the sugar and mix well. Warm up the milk a little until lukewarm. Mix 50ml milk with a teaspoon of the sugar and crumble the yeast into it, mix until creamy then add to the flour. Melt the butter into the rest of the warm milk and add this to the flour too. Knead it until well mixed and the dough comes away from the side of the bowl. Cover and leave in a warm place for an hour to rise and double in size while you make the filling.

Grind the poppy seeds together with the sugar using a coffee or spice grinder. Warm up the milk with the vanilla until boiling, take it off the heat and add the ground poppy seed-sugar mix, lemon zest, semolina, rum soaked sultanas with their liquid. Mix well and let it cool.

Take the dough and divide into 2 or 4 pieces depending on the size of the beigli you want to make. Roll each one out to a rectangle shape to about 5mm thickness, spread the filling evenly on top, leaving the edges clear. Fold the short sides in slightly to keep the filling in, then roll it up starting from one of the long sides. Place on a baking sheet, fold side down, leaving a generous gap between the rolls. Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 6. Brush the pastry with a beaten egg and leave it to rest until the oven is ready. Pierce the sides in several places with a sharp fork, this will prevent the rolls from splitting. Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden colour and cooked through. Cool and dust with icing sugar.

Cheese scones Juhtúrós pogácsa

Juhtúró is a soft sheep's cheese with a very strong distinctive flavour. It's delicious in a lot of savoury dishes like scones or pasta dishes. It makes a lovely moist dough for scones, they don't dry out but stay fresh for days. I haven't seen anything similar in the UK but came up with the idea of using other types of sheep's cheese widely available instead. Feta cheese mixed with a bit of natural cottage cheese gave the right creamy and slightly salty texture that juhtúró has. But ricotta could also be used instead. You could even add a sprinkle of grated Pecorino or Manchego on top, both of which are  hard sheep's cheese.  I opted for a more decorative finish of poppy seeds and sesame sprinkle. These small cheesy scones are great as a savoury nibble, or eat them with a bowl of warming soup as we did. The beautiful hand made ceramic bowl was a recent present from my Dutch friends Vera and Remco :-)

To make 45-50 small scones: 

500g plain flour

1 sachet (7g) dried yeast

250g butter

200g feta cheese

100g plain cottage cheese

2 egg yolks

200ml creme fraiche or sour cream

pinch of salt

1 beaten egg for egg wash, sesame and poppy seeds for decoration

Mix the flour with the dried yeast and crumble together with the butter until it is a fine breadcrumb texture. Mix in the finely crumbled feta and the cottage cheese. Add the egg yolks, sour cream, salt and knead it until completely mixed and you have a fairly firm dough. Put in a clean bowl, cover and let it prove for 1,5-2 hours in a warm place. Preheat the oven to 180C. Knock the dough back and roll it to a 1cm thickness on a floured surface. Using a round cookie cutter, cut out the scones and place them on a greased baking sheet. Brush with an egg wash and sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until golden colour and cooked through.

Mákos guba - Honey and Poppy seed Bread and Butter Pudding

Autumn is truly here with its damp and cold days and it naturally inspires me to cook more wintry dishes. There are a lot of store cupboard ingredients to choose from when there is less fresh fruit available, and the two most popular ones for toppings and fillings in sweet dishes in Hungary are poppy seeds and walnut. There is so much more to poppy seed than it being just a decoration sprinkled on cakes and pastries. Ground up and cooked with milk, sugar and spices it makes a delicious sweet and creamy paste, or ground and mixed with icing sugar you can sprinkle on various baked desserts. To ground poppy seed it is easiest to use a coffee grinder or a spice grinder. I mix it with icing sugar and grind it like that if a recipe calls for both. Mákos guba was originally made around Christmas time to symbolise wealth with the thousands of tiny seeds. It is still prepared as a celebration dish around the holidays. But these days many families have it all year round, it's a favourite with children too. This is a classic version of a traditional dish, but it can also be baked with custard, spices or orange and lemon zest added, served with cream or whatever takes your fancy. I love it traditionally served with a generous drizzle of honey. In Hungary you would make it with butter horn pastries (kifli), these are medium size yeasty dough pastries shape of a half moon. I will add a post on how to make these, they are really simple. This time I used a normal size baguette which is available everywhere.

1 normal size baguette (not too long and chunky)

450ml milk

vanilla pod or vanilla extract

80g black poppy seed

80g icing sugar

40g butter

honey

Preheat oven to 180C. Slice your baguette into 1cm discs and place them on a baking tray then put it in the oven to dry them out a bit. This pudding is usually made with slightly stale bread that soaks up the vanilla scented milk better. If you have a fresh baguette, drying in the oven helps to achieve this. Keep an eye on it so it doesn't start to toast. 

Butter a medium size baking dish and place the baguette discs in. Warm the milk up with a few drops of vanilla extract or the scraped seeds and pod from the vanilla. Do not let it boil. Pour the hot milk over the bread and let it soak. Turn it if you need to so it soaks up the milk all over. Grind the poppy seed and mix it with the icing sugar. Sprinkle this on top of the milky bread, turning it to coat the whole lot. Dot the top with pieces of butter and bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes or until warmed through and the bread is softened but slightly crispy on top.

Serve it with a good drizzle of honey.

Cherry and poppy seed cake

Cherries and poppy seeds are two very popular and frequently used ingredients in Hungarian desserts. Cherry and sour cherry trees are part of every garden and basis for all sorts of preserves and sweets. Poppy seeds, usually ground and made into a sweet creamy paste makes a lovely rich filling for many pastries. In this recipe it replaces half of the flour and substitutes some of the sugar too, adding a distinctive flavour and a speckled look to the cake. By this perhaps reducing some of the calories too... Serve it with a dollop of sour cream or creme fréche. It's really quick to make and great with afternoon tea.

3 eggs

100 g caster sugar

50 g plain flour

50 g black poppy seed (ground - this is best done in a coffee grinder)

1 lemon

2 tbsp sour cream

250 g cherries, stones removed

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 6.

Mix the eggs with the sugar until it looks light, pale and fluffy - this takes 3-4 minutes in a free standing mixer and it should  double in size. Sift the flour into the mix, add the grated zest of the lemon, the ground poppy seeds, mix well. Gently mix in the sour cream.

Pour the mixture into a lined springform cake tin or pie dish (24 cm) and add the cherries, gently pushing them into the mix. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until cooked through. Baking time depends on the size of your tin. If it is larger, the cake will be ready quicker. If it is smaller, it will be a deeper cake that takes slightly longer to cook through. Keep checking with a wooden skewer.

If you wanted, you could macerate the cherries in some kirsch and sugar a few hours earlier, then use the liquid to make a reduced syrup to drizzle over the cake while it is still warm.