In the Czech Republic, compared to many western European countries, you can buy poppy seeds in any supermarket and they are often used as an ingredient in many tasty foods. Poppy seed are highly nutritious and contain oil with delicious aroma, therefore they have culinary use as decorative garnish, spice or thickener especially in baked goods and deserts. Poppy seeds have long been used as a folk remedy to aid sleeping, promote fertility and wealth, and even to provide supposed magical powers of invisibility. Well, the magical powers of poppy are not used in cuisine but it has been proved that poppy seeds can really help with diarrhea, abdominal pain, cough, and insomnia. My Slovakian grannie used to warm up a cup of milk with little bit of honey and poppy seeds to help when somebody could not fall asleep. Moreover, in central Europe we have lot of recipes for delicious cakes and breads containing poppy seeds. In countries of former Austro-Hungarian Empire it is very popular to serve sweet nut roll filled with poppy seed paste. It is called makovec in Czech, makovnik in Slovak, makowiec in Polish or Mohnstollen in German and you can try to prepare it according to following recipe 🙂
Dough
300 g flour
150 ml milk
1 egg
4 soupspoons of icing sugar
50 g unsalted butter
20 g fresh yeast
pitch of salt
Filing
200 g ground poppy seeds
150 g icing sugar
130 ml milk
yolk of 1 egg for brushing the surface of the roll
First warm up the milk, so it does not get too hot and you can still touch it, dissolve 2 spoons of sugar, 2 spoons of flour and all the yeast in it. Let it stay until the volume of yeast mixture doubles. Meanwhile in a large bowl combine the rest of the sugar and flour with one egg and melted but not hot butter, then add yeast mixture and knead well to have sticky thick dough. Form a ball from it, sprinkle with little bit of flour and cover the bowl with clear dish towel. Keep the dough in a warm place to let it grow for approximately 1 hour. Then move the dough onto well floured work surface and roll it into thin rectangle shape layer. In the separate bowl mix ground poppy seeds, icing sugar and milk. Then spread this mixture on the surface of the rolled dough and carefully roll it up. Move the whole roll on the baking tin with baking paper. Grease the surface of the roll with whisked egg, that gives it a nice shine. Then perforate the roll on few places with a fork to avoid cracks during baking. Finally put in the pre-heated oven on 170°C, bake for about 20 min and then lower the temperature to 120°C and continue baking for 10 more minutes until the surface start to turn golden brown. When the cake is ready and cold sprinkle it with icing sugar for decoration. Bon appetite!
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