I’ve ogled at gorgeous cakes with blue poppy for a long time. I’ve bookmarked recipes just so that one day when I do get my hands on some blue poppy, I will use all those recipes. When I finally bought a bottle of blue poppy seeds on my trip last month, the first thing I wanted to bake were the lemon poppy seed muffins I saw in Baking From My Home to Yours. Each time I skimmed through the book, I gaped at the lemon muffins for a while before moving to the next page. This had to be the recipe I’d try with blue poppy seeds.
Although this recipe is meant for muffins, I’m not such a big fan of mixing the dry and wet seperately and then folding it together. While I stuck to to the ingredients; I mixed them as if I were making cakes – mixing the butter and sugar first, then adding in the flavourings, then the eggs, and finally folding in the dry ingedients alternately with the yoghurt. These gave me some incredibly moist cupcakes. When you’re eating them fresh out of the oven, you will enjoy biting into a light crust. Once it has cooled down, you can spoon some lemon icing over it – although the next time, I’d use just water or milk with sugar for the icing.
I absolutely loved how the cake turned out. It had beautiful texture with the poppy seeds adding their characteristic nuttyness. With yoghurt in the cake, you can NEVER go wrong. You will always get the softest, most delicate crumb. The one thing I learnt is that I’m not a huge fan of lemon flavouring. Even though I put half the quanity of zest and skipped the lemon juice in the cake, I found the fragrance of the lemon zest was enough to make me feel giddy. I need to find a new flavour to pair the poppy seeds with. Any suggestions?
Lemon Poppy Seed Cupcakes
Adapted from: Baking From My Home to Yours.
Yield: 1 cupcakes
2/3rd cup sugar
1 stick/100g butter, softened
2 eggs
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp blue poppy seeds
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4th tsp baking soda
1/4th tsp salt
3/4th cup yoghurt
Icing:
½ cup icing sugar
1-2 tbsp lemon juice or water
- Preheat oven to 400°F/200°C. Grease 12 muffin cups.
- In a large bowl mix together the sugar and butter with a stand mixer/hand mixer until light and creamy. About 3 minutes.
- Add in the eggs one at a time, keeping a minute’s gap between each addition
- Throw in the lemon zest and the vanilla extract. Stir in the poppy seeds.
- Whisk together the dry ingredients.
- Lower the speed and add the dry ingredients and the yoghurt alternately, 3 parts flour and 2 parts yoghurt, starting and ending with the flour. (flour-yoghurt-flour-yoghurt-flour!)
- Pour the batter in the prepared moulds and gently even out the top.
- Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until a thin knife comes out clean.
- Unmould the cupcakes after 5 minutes and gobble one up while you wait for the others to cool completely before icing (yes, you’ve got to wait or the icing will melt on the cake and will look ugly).
- For the icing, stir the icing sugar with 1 tablespoon of the lemon juice until it’s moist. Add a little at a time and keep stirring with each addition to check if you’ve got the texture you’re looking for – white and creamy that is still thin enough to drizzle over the cupcakes.
- Spoon the over the cupcakes. Eat it up!
{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve made Dorie’s recipe before. Loved it. Yours turned out super cute. Great photos!
Gorgeous! Love the poppy seed pic. These sound delicious
I’ve been wanting to make lemon poppyseed muffins, and am fascinated with your method of mixing. They look so moist and delish! I did see another recipe using poppy seeds recently — I’ll send the link when I find it ; )
I`m not crazy about mixing wet and dry separately either. I like making everything the creaming way. It always seem to be the most reliable and produce the most tender crumb. Plus, I don`t trust my folding..haha
how about cinnamon instead of the vanilla?
i can’t decide which is cuter: your cupcakes or your plate
the cupcakes look so moist and delicious..very cute presentation
Loved your clicks! Cupcakes look so good with those studded poppy seeds. They look very moist, and guess it tastes great too!
Great job!
i love the combo of almond and poppyseed. you can switch out the vanilla for almond extract. or maybe rosewater instead of vanilla
Thanks, all.
Steph: I totally agree! I’d hate to find a blob of flour in the muffin.
Arjun, I love the vanilla. I want to get a sub for lemon.
Shauna: I *love* your suggestions! Esp the one with rosewater. Now I’m thinking of dried rose petals as well
You seem to be an ingredient hoarder like me. I bring so much back each trip there isn’t any space left in the fridge
Never tried this but have always wanted to. I guess I shall bookmark this
Hey we have the same pink measuring cups! I thought I was all alone on that one
Oh Jude, I love these cute cups and spoons. I even bought the hot pink set for backup
here are a couple of suggestions for you to try out if you dont like the lemon-popyseed combination.
Almond poppyseed
Orange poppyseed
Banana poppyseed
I just made these. They really are incredibly fluffy and soft and not too sweet. I didn't put zest into the batter because my lemon wasn't organic, but when I put the lemon juice icing on top of them – it gave them enough lemon flavor. I also ended-up putting more yogurt to adjust the softness of the batter in the end. Anyway it's a really nice easy fast recipe. Thanks for posting!
Hey Murasaki, thanks for letting me know how these turned out for you. Good point you brought up about not using the zest when the lemons aren't organic.
You can also use the normal poppy seeds for this right? The white ones we called khus-khus?
I guess you can – but I use them more for the speckled look than for anything else. Don't know what others poppy seed aficionados might think though!
how about adding some white chocolate/ white chocolate chips to these?
Hey Purple,
Can you please tell me where can I find these blue poppy seeds? or what are they called in Hindi?
Cheers!
Kusum Rohra
Unfortunately, not.
It’s simply khus khus that’s this gorgeous blue colour.
I really want to try baking these lovelies, however I am not able to find blue khus khus at all
sigh!
I will keep looking though
I from the UK, but living in Holland. Here the blue poppy seeds are called: Maansaad Blauw, which translates to moon seed blue. Might they be translated to something similar in Hindi?
I doubt it because I have never seen them at any grocer or market – the white ones are very easily available though.
I would suggest using another citrus fruit… I tried poppy seeds with orange and it wasnt so bad….. Also poppy seed crusted chicken is something I might try next.
Hi! My family loves the lemon poppy seed muffins & my recipe is similar to the one you mention above… only I find the lemon fragrance a little too overpowering…. & headachy! Try using Orange instead & Almond with Poppy seed seems interesting too! Going down no to make them … both!!
I “have” to inaugurate my blue poppy seed jar!
I have made poppy seed cakes with an orange kinda sauce or glaze. Its made from orange concentrate and such.
Made this recipe for an afternoon tea and they are lovely! I had a whole lot of limes; so substituted lemon for lime. Instead of icing just made a lime hot sugar syrup (half cup sugar, half cup water, quarter cup lime juice; put in pot on low heat stir until sugar dissolved, turn heat up and simmer for 3 mins). Then spooned the hot sticky goodness over top of cakes!! Oh yum yum yum!!l
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