Christmas Poppy Seed Cake. Makowiec

Poppy seed Cake called Makowiec, is the second most important Christmas cake after Gingerbread, which absolutely can’t be missing during Christmas time. The secret of the ideal cake lies in its poppy seed filling, which means the more filling the better.
According to tradition, Makowiec is usually baked as a strudel, but as a big fan of poppy seed, I prefer minimum dough and lots of filling.

Makowiec is incredibly moist, aromatic and keeps fresh for a long time. The only problem with making this cake is poppy seed, which isn’t that popular in Western Europe.
There are 3 different types of poppy seed (white, black and blue), the most common is black poppy seed, which is used in many recipes. You can buy some poppy seed at the health store or shops with imported food from the East (like Poland or Latvia), sometimes you can also buy ready to use poppy filling, which is really good and can save you a lot of time. I can honestly recommend Bakalland brand. It’s perfect!
If you can’t find ready to use poppy filling, you can make it yourself. It’s not so difficult as long as you use a good grinder.

Christmas Poppy Seed Cake. Makowiec



Ingredients:

Poppy seed filling:
500g dried poppy seed
2/3 cup of honey
4-5 tablespoons Amaretto liqueur (optional)
½ cup glace fruit

or
a can of ready to use poppy seed filling from Bakalland (850g)

Cake:
poppy seed filling
110g (1/2 cup)caster sugar
3 eggs, separated yolks and whites
4 tablespoons semolina

Pastry (top and bottom of cake)
80g cold butter
60g (1/2 cup) ground almond
110g (3/4 cup) plain flour
60g (1/2 cup) icing sugar
1-2 tablespoon water


Method:

Poppy seed filling:
1. Place poppy seed in a large bowl and pour boiling water (2-3 litres) over to soften for 12h (overnight).
2. Next day drain and grind twice poppy seed in a mincer.
3. Place ground poppy seed in a large bowl and add honey, Amaretto and glace fruit. Mix well.

Pastry:
4. Preheat oven to 200C
5. Process flour, icing sugar, ground almond and butter until crumbly. Add water; process until mixture comes together.
6. Knead dough on floured surface until smooth. Enclose with plastic wrap; refrigerate 30 minutes
7. Roll two-third of the pastry; large enough to fit 23cm flan tin.
8. Lift pastry into tin, ease into base; bake 10 minutes. Remove from the oven, cool to a room temperature.

Cake:
9. Preheat oven to 170C
10. Beat 3 egg yolks with sugar until creamy (5-7minutes). Fold poppy seed filling and semolina into yolks mixture, in two batches.
11. Beat 3 egg whites in a separate medium bowl until stiff peaks form. Fold gently into poppy seed mixture in two batches.
12. Line side of round tin with baking paper; extending paper 5cm above edge.
13. Pour poppy seed mixture over pastry base. Bake 50 minutes.

14. Meanwhile, roll remaining pastry on floured surface, cut star shapes.
15. After 50 minutes of baking remove cake from the oven and arrange pastry stars over poppy seed cake.
16. Bake again for 20-30 minutes until pastry stars are lightly browned.
17. Remove from the oven and cool in the pan until completely cold.

Enjoy :-)

Polish gingerbread cookies. Pierniczki.

Christmas doesn’t exist :-) without gingerbread cookies called “pierniczki”. You can find these traditional honey cookies at almost every Polish home. As an Christmas tree decorations, as present for your friends or as being eaten furtively from the cookies box. Gingerbread cookies are always main Christmas symbol at my home.

Gingerbread cookies are spicy, aromatic and they are similar to a Polish Gingerbread. We use the same ingredients to make the dough and we can store them for several weeks what makes them getting better and better.

At the beginning cookies are rather hard, but after few days they are getting softer and more aromatic and this is exactly how the cookies should be – thick, spicy and soft*

*if cookies are still too hard after few days, just  put them into a box with a piece of apple and close tightly. This should definitely help them making softer.

What can I say….gingerbread cookies are just divine!


Polish gingerbread cookies. Pierniczki.


makes 100 cookies

Ingredients:

200g natural honey
150g () light muscavado sugar
110g cold butter
2 eggs, beaten lightly
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
450g () wheat flour (plain flour)
100g rye flour (you can also replace rye flour with plain flour )
2 tablespoon spices*

* spices
2 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp ground cardamom,
1 tbsp ground black pepper,
1 tbsp ground nutmeg
1 tbsp powdered ginger
2/3 tbsp ground cloves,
½ tbsp ground aniseed
½ tbsp ground coriander
½ tbsp ground allspice
½ tbsp ground fennel


Method:

1. Place the butter, honey, muscavado sugar and 1 tablespoon of spices in a medium pan. Heat over a low heat until the butter has melted and the sugar dissolved. Cool a little.
2. Mix the beaten eggs with the cooled mixture.
3. Sift the flour, baking powder and one tablespoon of spices into a large mixing bowl.
4. Add the liquid ingredients to the flour mixture.
5. Using a wooden spoon at first, and then with your hands pull the dough together and knead until smooth. Enclose with plastic wrap; Leave at room temperature for all night or at least (3-4 hours)
6. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface** to 1cm/ ½ in thick. Cut into shapes as desired.
7. Place on the baking sheets and bake for 10 minutes or until beginning to brown around the edges. Using a metal spatula, transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.
8. To decorate I used ready designer icing.
** too much flour makes cookies hard so I instead of flour use icing sugar and this works great as well!

Enjoy :-)

Piernik. Polish Christmas gingerbread.

The Polish tradition of baking gingerbread goes back to the early Slavonic times, when cakes made with honey performed a ritual function. In those times, when sugar was still unknown, the only highly valued sweetener was the honey of wild bees, which the early Slavs mixed with crushed wheat grain. This delicacy served at pagan feasts was the forerunner of today’s gingerbread.

The traditional recipe was rather simple. The dough was made from pure honey, spices! (cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, aniseed), one part rye flour and one part wheat flour , spirit and potash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potash (today’s baking powder). It matured slowly and could be kept unbaked for months, even years (the longer the better).

The best! traditional Polish piernik (gingerbread) has been produced since the Middle Ages in the city of Toruń (Thorn).

You can visit World of Toruń Gingerbread (at Nicolaus Copernicus House), make your own famous gingerbread or just buy some of them at the traditional Torun gingerbread store. Torun is really amazing, not only because of the best Piernik they make. This is also one of the oldest and in my opinion one of the most beautiful polish towns.

Piernik. Polish Christmas gingerbread



Ingredients:

200g natural honey
50g (1/4 cup) light muscavado sugar
50g cold butter
2 eggs, beaten lightly
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
300g (2 cups) plain flour
2 tablespoon spices*

* spices
2 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp ground cardamom,
1 tbsp ground black pepper,
1 tbsp ground nutmeg
1 tbsp powdered ginger
2/3 tbsp ground cloves,
½ tbsp ground aniseed
½ tbsp ground coriander
½ tbsp ground allspice
½ tbsp ground fennel

Method:

1. Place the butter, honey, muscavado sugar and 1 tablespoon of spices in a medium pan. Heat over a low heat until the butter has melted and the sugar dissolved. Cool a little.
2. Mix the beaten eggs with the cooled mixture.
3. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and one tablespoon of spices into a large mixing bowl.
4. Add the liquid ingredients to the flour mixture and beat well using a wooden spoon until mixture is smooth. (mixture should be thick)
5. Pour the mixture into prepared tin (I used Fluted round tin, ∅ 22cm )
6. Bake in a preheated oven, 180C/350F for 1 hour until well risen and just firm to the touch.
7. Remove from the oven and cool in the tin. When cool, remove the cake from the tin with the lining paper. Overwrap with foil and place in airtight container up to 2-3 days to allow the flavour to mature.
8. The cake is ready to eat also after baking!
9. Spread with the chocolate or icing topping if you wish.

Enjoy :-)

Specullas (Speculoos).

Before I start making any Polish goodies for Christmas I like to see what interesting and typical dishes are made in other countries.
Today, I came across the Belgian Speculoos recipe and decided to make them and try how they taste.
Specullas (Speculoos) is a type of shortcrust biscuit, traditionally baked for consumption on St Nicholas' Eve in the Netherlands and Belgium. Biscuits are baked on a special speculaas mold made from wood, but you can also use your favorites cookies-cutter.
Here are some samples of speculaas wooden molds :-)

You can find the original recipe here.
Below is my recipe with a few modifications and gram measures added.
I don’t add backing soda (it was in the original recipe). I just don’t like when cookies puffs up. I prefer thin and hard cookies. They are more crunchy.

Specullas ( Speculoos )

Ingredients:
240g ( 1 2/3 cups) plain flour
140g (3/4 cup) dark brown sugar
140g cold plain butter
4 tablespoons milk

Speculoos Spices. My mix contains:
1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ginger powder

Method:
1. Dice the butter into a big bowl. Add flour, sugar and spices.
2. Gently rub in the butter with your fingertips, add 4 tablespoons of milk and then bring the dough together into a ball (the mixture forms a soft dough that leaves the side of the bowl and doesn't stick to your hand).
3. Enclose with plastic wrap; refrigerate 3-4 hours or for a complete night.
4. Preheat the oven to 170C
5.Roll out the dough on a floured work surface (roll to about ½ cm thick). Cut out your favourite shapes and lay on a lined baking sheet.
6.Bake for 15-25 minutes, until light golden. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Enjoy :)