Lemon Poppy Seed Cake
This recipe makes approximately 10-12 servings
I saw this cake online. Apparently it's hugely popular, so I had to try and recreate it in gluten free. It's a classic lemon cake, but bursting with popping, crunchy poppy seeds. I first baked this cake at Easter time and experimented with adding classic marzipan Easter eggs instead of pure raw marzipan. The marzipan eggs can of course be replaced with more pure raw marzipan, or maybe snowballs if it's that time of year. Bake this cake if you love a tart cake with lots of lemon and sweet almond flavor from the marzipan. The cake is ultra soft and gets plenty of moisture from both the large amount of marzipan and the almond flour.
Lemon Poppy Seed Cake
Preperation: >30 minutes Cooking time: 35-40 minutes Total: >80 minutes
Ingredients
This recipe makes approximately 10-12 servings
Lemon cake
225 g butter, room temperature.
25 g vanilla sugar
100 g marzipan
5 g Xanthan gum
12 g baking powder
175 g sugar
50 g almond flour
20 g poppy seeds
5 g salt
Lemon zest from 1-2 lemons to taste.
200 g red finax or other gluten-free light flour mix.
1,5 dl milk
Approx. 1 dl lemon juice, fresh (approx. the juice from three medium-sized lemons)
3 eggs M/L
150 g marzipan eggs/snowballs/pure marzipan
Frosting
150 g icing sugar
0,5 dl lemon juice, maybe a little less
50 g marzipan eggs/snowballs or other chocolate crunch for decoration (optional)
Method
Preheat the oven to 170 degrees regular oven. Line a mold with baking paper. Mine measures 21x21 cm.
Mix the butter, vanilla sugar and grated marzipan together. Add the Xanthan gum, baking powder and sugar. Stir again. Add almond flour, poppy seeds, salt and flour. Stir again.
Add the milk, lemon juice and eggs. Add the marzipan eggs and mix together.
Pour the mixture into a mold. Bake in the hot oven for about 35-40 minutes. Let it cool completely.
Meanwhile, you can make the icing. Put the icing sugar in a bowl. Add the lemon juice little by little. The icing should be a little thinner than normal icing. Pour the icing over the cold cake and spread it out.
Decorate with crushed marzipan eggs or any other chocolate eggs you like.
Cut the cake into appropriate pieces. And most importantly, enjoy 💛🧡💛
Tips and storage
〰️ The cake can easily be baked 1-2 days in advance and stored in a tightly sealed container at room temperature. It's super moist and won't get dry.
〰️ The cake may rise a bit during baking and get a small peak in the middle, so you may be worried that the cake will not be suitable for decorating with icing and Easter eggs. It does, because the hilltop will fall down again when the cake gets cold.
〰️ Lemon zest can be a bit divisive. I love it, so I use zest from almost two whole lemons. And it doesn't taste bitter. But you can easily use less, and probably more.
〰️ Poppy seeds can be left out if there are children (or adults) who don't like them. For example, I always got “bald buns” as a child because I didn't like poppy seeds. Now I love them.
〰️ You can replace poppy seeds with sunflower seeds or black sesame seeds, for example, if you want to add something. Otherwise just leave them out.
〰️ If you think the cake takes on too much color during baking, you can cover it with tinfoil while it finishes baking.
