I made this incredibly dense cake for Heather's baby shower, and it was a big hit. I love lemon poppyseed, but the orange poppyseed made it a little less expected, and possibly a bit more chic.
I got the recipe from Megan's Kitchen, and I followed it pretty closely. The vanilla paste is a little pricey, so I just used my Mexican liquid vanilla. I doubt it made a big difference.
The big tip I tried out for this recipe, was a tip I found on Pinterest about keeping the cake perfectly flat. the cake didn't rise much at all to begin with, but that dome on the top of a cake comes because the outside of the cake cooks faster than the inside. To keep it all cooking at the same pace, wrap a cold, wet towel strip around the outside of the round pan. I put them on a cookie sheet because I was nervous about the towel touching the oven racks. And I checked on it often. You don't want to leave a towel in your oven without keeping a close eye on it...
I even had a moment where I was like, I'm that girl who believes everything she reads on the internet!! I just put a TOWEL in the OVEN... I'm going to set my apartment on fire and someone on Pinterest is going to have a good laugh about it....
But I didn't set the house on fire. The white towel didn't even brown. And the cakes stayed perfectly flat! It made it SO easy to layer. But I was a little sad I didn't have any lopped-off tops to munch on... I had to wait till the shower to taste it.
Just the THOUGHT of orange poppy seed makes my mouth water. There's not much time to bake around here... Perhaps a quick flight to LA to whip up some baked goodies is in your future?? :)
ReplyDeleteI wish!! It's probably cooler there than here in Iowa... I sweat every time I turn on the oven.
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