Poppy Seed Cake

Now THIS is what a Poppy Seed Cake is supposed to look like.

Not like this.

It may not be pretty, but it's still my most requested cake.

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Happy New Year!

Here we come down to the final countdown of the holiday season. We'll have a family gathering tomorrow at my parent's house; then my brother and family will be heading back to Cincinnati on Friday, and my husband and I will start our final prep and frantic activity before leaving on Monday to go back to Georgia.

In the meantime, I'm making some "hoovy doovies" (as we say at my house) for my family tonight, along with some goodies for the family dinner tomorrow.

Tonight we'll be having cocktail wieners in "secret sauce", the best queso dip with chips, and either pastrami sandwiches on sub-buns or beef fajitas, not sure which. I also have some chocolate peanut butter chip cookies I made last night (just the standard recipe from the back of the Reeses' peanut butter chip package, no secret to this one!) and some snow-drop cookies I made this afternoon. We'll probably toast the New Year in with eggless eggnog, if we're still awake.

Tomorrow's menu will include black-eyed peas with rice; Mexican cornbread; coleslaw; and a variety of chips and dips and desserts. For my contribution, I've already made a pot of black-eyed peas--my Mom makes hers with the leftover ham bone from Christmas, I make mine just like I do 10-bean soup, with chicken and ground meat. I have poppy seed cakes in the oven as we speak--one to take to family dinner tomorrow, one made as two loaves to gift to a couple of people. I'll also be making spinach dip and crab spread, (made with a combination of crab and shrimp this time) and will probably take a plate of leftover cookies.


I love the smells going on in my kitchen right now--peas are simmering, cocktail wieners are parboiling, cakes are baking...Ummmm, makes me want to bottle this up and give it away!

Hoping you and yours will have a happy and safe New Year!

Good cooking, and good eating!

What Do You Do If the Cake Falls, or, True Confessions of a Fallen Cake Baker

When my sister and I were teenagers, we liked to make goodies--cakes, candies, cookies, etc. One day we made a cake in a regular 9 x 13 pan, just like dozens we'd made before, but it fell. Don't know how a flat cake falls, but this one did. So we did what any self-respecting teenager would do. Filled in the hole with frosting. Yep, the finished cake looked smooth and beautiful. It just had about 2 inches of frosting piled in the middle. If you got a piece from the edge, it had more cake than frosting. If from the middle, guess what??

Well, that's what I was thinking about today when I took a cake out of the oven. Too bad this one doesn't have frosting!

Some of you may have seen my earlier post about my World Famous Poppy Seed Cake ;0), I was making one that week to take to my in-laws for Thanksgiving, and took a few pictures to post. The finished product turned out a little bit lopsided, though, so I never took the final picture.

Today I decided to make another one, and photograph the finished product.

Well, guess what? Not only did it fall, it tore coming out of the pan. I've made this cake dozens, if not literally hundreds, of time, and I have never had this cake fall. Never. Ever. So it made absolutely the worst looking finished cake. Well, maybe not the worst of all time, but Not Pretty.

And what did I do with this ugly, lopsided cake? I took a picture, anyway. And then I ate it. Yum.

So, here it is in all of it's glory.

Before

During

First Attempt

Grand Finale

So, what do you do if the cake falls? Eat it.

Good cooking, and even better eating...

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My Most Requested Cake

Today I'm going to give you the top secret recipe for my most requested cake, hands down. This cake is deceptively simple to make, but oh-so-good. It's kind of like the old nursery rhyme about Pease Porridge--it's good hot or cold, or even nine days old, if you can manage to keep it for that long. It's one of those cakes that actually seems to get better and more moist with age, as long as it's well wrapped. Kind of like cheese! It freezes well, and while I usually make it in a tube pan or a bundt pan, it also makes two perfect loaves if you want to freeze one or give one as a gift.

What magic cake is this? My world famous Poppy Seed Cake. Unlike most poppy-seed cakes or muffins, this one has no lemon, and it also requires no frosting or glaze--I sift powedered sugar over the top after it's cooled, and that's all it needs to be the perfect cake.

And now for the recipe...shhh...quiet, it's a secret...

• 1 box of Duncan Hines butter recipe golden cake mix


• 1 8oz container sour cream


• 1/2 c sugar


• 1/2 c cooking oil


• 4 eggs


• 3 T poppy seeds

Mix all ingredients but the poppy seeds, and beat for 2 minutes on low to medium speed. Mix poppy seeds into the batter. Pour into a greased or cooking-sprayed tube or bundt pan. Bake at 350 for about 50 minutes. If the top seems not quite done, I turn the oven off and leave the cake in it for about 5 more minutes. I watch for the edges to start pulling away from the pan. If I use a bundt pan, I loosen the edges with a butter knife, and remove from the pan immediately. Most of the time I use a tube pan--like an angel-food cake pan. I remove the cake from the outer ring, and let it sit on the inner ring until cool, then run a butter knife around the bottom and the tube in the middle. Once plated, sift powdered sugar over the top. I like lots of powdered sugar on the top. I'm making two of these this week for Thanksgiving, I'll try to remember to take pictures so you can see the finished product.

And that's it. As I said before, deceptively simple. It really is better the next day. These make good gifts, too, becuase they keep so well, and everyone I know who has ever eaten this has liked it.

Note: I gave this recipe to a friend many years ago. She never used the Duncan Hines cake mix, she used a different brand. She used meduim eggs, and I use large or extra-large eggs. She didn't put as many poppy seeds in hers.It was just not the same cake--not as moist, not as good. It was just an ok cake. So if you want to get the full effect, make it at least once with the name brand cake mix before you start tweaking it. The only thing I've ever left out were the poppy seeds when I used the recipe to make cupcakes for a pre-school class--they tend to not like "things" in their food, and it was still a good, moist, cupcake, just not a poppy-seed cupcake!

Good baking, and good eating; until next time...

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