There are words that make me happier just by saying them. Among these are the Scottish place names Beeswing, Wogle, Auchterarder and Mugiemoss; the animal names aardvark, moose and piglet; and the food names butterbean, nectarine and poppyseed. And quite frankly, my like of the word poppyseed was what possessed me to make the following cake last week. I don’t even like cakes that much! Turns out this one was rather lovely though and I shall be making it again soon.
Poppy Seed and Vanilla Cake
140g butter, room temp
140g caster sugar
Seeds from 1 vanilla pod
1 tspn vanilla extract (optional)
2 eggs
100ml buttermilk
140g plain flour
Pinch of salt
1 tspn baking powder
40g poppy seeds
- Rub a 20cm cake tin with butter and line with baking paper. Preheat oven to 180 oC.
- Cream together the sugar, butter and vanilla seeds. Taste and add the vanilla extract if you think the cake needs it.
- Mix together the eggs and buttermilk. Add little by little to the creamed eggs and sugar mixing in thoroughly each time.
- Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into the bowl and add the poppy seeds. Fold together until ingredients are combined.
- Spoon into the cake tin and bake for 40 minutes until golden on top.
- Allow to cool before eating.
A Wee Bit of Cooking 
Love the look (and sound!) of this cake. It reminds of a cake we were given on our honeymoon in America. I’ve been meaning to try and re-create it and I imagine it might have been very like this (though it was rather over-smothered in icing!).
Looks nice. I’ve made lemon and popseed muffins before but never cake.
I love poppy seed covered rolls and I know exactly who to make that poppyseed cake for .
Lovely recipe !
I like Fochaber and Lochaber.
The seeds! Lady, you have such a beautiful eye.
Words with a sense of rhythm to them, they roll off the tongue so well. Spoken in my best oztrayan accent, I like the way that Oodnadatta (South Australian outback) sounds when you lengthen the “Oo” at the beginning.
Good lookin’ cake, that.
YUM! This is being added to my “to do” list ASAP. Have you started seeds for your garden yet? Just did mine a few days ago. I might have to quit my job to tend to my garden full time 🙂
I always loved driving through auchendinny when I lived in Scotland because of the name – and I love to say obstreperous. I love to eat poppyseed cake because it looks good and tastes great – glad you found a cake to love
I love cooking with poppy seeds, they just look gorgeous in any food. I’m going to attempt this recipe tonight – thanks for the lovely recipe! 🙂
Perfect! I just found poppyseeds, plus I have just burnt my poppyseed and lemon loaf-so I will make this-it looks great. What can I use instead of buttermilk??…I will have a search.
I love simple cakes like this! Looks so good!
This combination looks really interesting…I love vanilla cake and the poppy seed twist looks gorgeous!
Look at those gorgeous seeds!!! I love the look of this cake.
I used to (and still) love saying Auchtermuchty, which is a town in Fife.
I know what you mean about the words and your musings were well worth it as they resulted in this yummy looking cake 🙂
Oh, I love poppyseeds! This cake sounds delicious… unfortunately we cannot buy poppyseeds here in the Middle East 😦 Illegal substance, you know!
ooh, looks delish – i’ll be baking at the weekend 🙂
on the subject of words, baboon is a favourite of mine! always makes me smile.
That’s a nice one 🙂
Two of my favourite words are “ooze” and “morsel”.
looks divine!!