Slovakian Poppyseed Cake: or, We need to buy poppyseeds in bulk

Everyone who saw this recipe said "I hope you're not taking a drug test."

Poppyseed Cake ½ cup poppyseeds ½ cup milk 1 cup flour 6 tbsp butter or oleo Pinch of salt (if butter is unsalted) 1 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar ½ tsp vanilla 1½ tsp baking powder 2 eggs, separated Grind the poppyseeds. Add the milk, and soak overnight in the refrigerator. The next day, whisk in the flour, and set aside. Heat oven to 350°. Grease an 8-inch cake pan. Cream the butter, sugar, salt, vanilla, and baking powder. Add the egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each. Gradually add the poppyseed mixture, and beat until smooth. Beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. (They should hold a point, but the very tip should fall a tiny bit.) Fold them into the batter. Pour into the pan and bake for 45 minutes. Top with plain or fancy frosting, according to taste. Florence Ribovich (Hammond, Indiana), Anniversary Slovak-American Cook Book, First Catholic Slovak Ladies Union, 1952

Before I made this recipe, I never thought about how much drug tests have become part of our everyday lives. Even people who have never been inside a police station know that a single poppyseed bagel will make you test positive for heroin. And we are using a lot more than a bagel's worth of poppyseeds today.

Anniversary Slovak-American Cook Book, First Catholic Slovak Ladies Union, 1952

We've made a few recipes out of the Anniversary Slovak-American Cook Book, but until now we've stuck to things like brownies and banana bread. Today we are finally venturing into the eastern European recipes that were only a few pages away from the peanut butter cookies.

I have never seen a poppyseed cake like this before. But while this recipe may be totally new to me, apparently it's very common in eastern Europe. The Slovak-American Ladies' Association Cook Book has three nearly-identical recipes for poppyseed cake spanning two pages. All of them require you to purchase two standard-size spice shakers of poppyseeds.

 

Florence Ribovich doesn't tell us to grind the seeds, but the other poppyseed cakes do. I therefore figured the instruction to grind the seeds was implied. And so, for our first adventure in eastern European cooking, I pulverized enough poppyseeds to make 7 or 8 non-Eastern European cakes. It looked like I was making a cake with potting soil.

I thought the milk would turn blue after soaking overnight, but it looked white and unchanged the next day. When we poured it out, the poppyseeds at the bottom had turned into a peculiar colored slime.

We are directed to add the flour to our poppyseeds and milk, and so I did. It turned into a grayish purple clay. Usually when your cake batter threatens to break the spoon, you have messed up beyond any attempts at salvaging. But since I know nothing about eastern European cooking, I assumed that things were going as Ms. Ribovich intended.

At this point in the recipe, the spoon proved useless. We had to bring in the power tools. With the indispensable aid of our mixer, we managed to turn this into an actual (if rather bizarrely colored) cake batter. I wasn't using the mixer to stir things together so much as chop up the heroin clay until it gave up.

At this point, our batter tasted like poppyseed kolache filling. Did you know poppyseeds have a taste? I used to think they merely added speckles and textural interest to poppyseed cake. But it turns out they have an nutty, anise-and-pecan-ish flavor. As soon as I tasted a sample, I regretted halving the recipe.

The cake rose a lot in the oven and produced an impressive dome. It would have looked so much better had I baked this in a loaf pan. If you want to bake this cake in layers and stack them, I would reduce the oven to 325°, and also make the batter thinner in the center of the pans and higher on the sides.

Regardless of whether the cake was any good or not, it was a lovely composition of colors. The purple(ish) cake contrasted with the white icing on top. The whole effect gained extra vibrance from the thin band of a surprisingly pretty golden color that separated the cake from the icing.

The cake tasted a lot more normal than I expected. The poppyseeds added an interesting toasty flavor, but their distinctive taste became more muted after baking. I was hoping for poppyseed kolache filling in cake form (especially after tasting the cake batter), but I got a perfectly lovely cake instead.

I must also note that the cake was amazingly soft and fluffy. Any reasonable-sized piece threatened to topple over on the plate. If I cut a slice that didn't threaten to tip over, it was too big for one person. (This is a very good problem to have.) 

So, if you don't mind buying a lot of poppyseeds, I definitely recommend this cake. It's unusual enough to be interesting without being weird. (Well it's unusual where I live, anyway.) But you should probably make sure you don't have an upcoming drug test.