Poppy seed Muffins
When you google poppy seeds muffins, you get muffins with two tablespoons (max) of poppy seeds. Which is nice but not as good as these 😁
You see, you need to go to Eastern Europe for inspiration - you need to grind those poppy seeds and put a bit more of them into the muffins. You’ll be surprised how good they are!
In the Czech Republic, poppy seeds are widely use for baking and I didn’t realise how much I missed that taste until I made these.. I see poppy seed filling as one of the three traditional fillings - apart from that we use sweet cheese (it is not sweet cheese, I don’t know what else to call it but it is something in between yogurt and cream cheese) and plum jam - it is not exactly jam, plums are cooked for few hours with a bit of sugar and it is delicious. These free are used in traditional bakes like kolache for example. (Note for myself - need to make these too)
I know that poppy seeds are a bit demonized food here in UK, which is such a shame. Did you know that poppy seeds are a great source of calcium? One of the best actually 😊
Makes 6 smaller muffins
Ingredients
1tbsp ground flax seeds
150ml milk (I used oat)
75g golden caster sugar
100g all purpose flour
100g ground poppy seeds*
35g vegan butter
1tsp baking powder
Method
First mix flax seeds with 3tbsp water and let it rest for at least 10mins.
Preheat the oven to 170C.
In a small sauce pan melt butter and let it cool down a bit while you prepare the rest.
Sift flour and baking powder into a bowl and whisk together. In another bowl mix sugar, milk, poppy seeds, flax seeds and butter. Then add it to the flour mixture and mix together (don’t overmix it).
Fill muffin cases (two thirds full) and bake for 20-25 mins (until inserted skewer comes out clean).
Optional: If you want to make icing - mix 1tsp lemon juice with 4tbsp icing sugar.
Notes:
How to grind poppy seeds - if you have a Polish shop around, they will probably have ground poppy seeds there. If you don’t, you can grind them in a coffee grinder (or in a good blender but I haven’t tried that).
If you want more muffins (or bigger ones), double the amount of ingredients.