Poppy Seed Bundt Cake

Poppy Seed Bundt Cake was inspired by the fact that butter is on sale this week at just about every grocery store. Butter is expensive, especially Land o'Lakes brand which I've been hooked on since the holidays. I noticed a while back it was working better than other butters. Cakes were coming out higher and fluffier and cookies were baking up with more buttery flavor. It could have been my imagination, but in any case I'm back on the yellow box and will need more thanks to this cake.

Poppy Seed Pound Cake Texture

Adapted from an old Mrs. Fields' recipe, Poppy Seed Bundt Cake would probably be classified as a pound cake, but not a heavy one even though it has 3 sticks of butter and 6 eggs. It's has a tight crumb, a light texture and is pleasantly crunchy from all the little seeds. I'm not sure why it took me so long to make it, but I suspect it was the fact I never had one key ingredient, Cream Sherry. As a wine lover, it's weird that I ignored this one ingredient which is not exactly difficult to find. I bought my bottle at Food Lion for $8.99.

Flavor and Taylor Cream Sherry

I'm struggling to describe the flavor of the cake and moreso, the Taylor Cream Sherry. Obviously, I could say it tastes buttery. But the Sherry. Hmm, would I know it was there had I not been the one to put it in the cake? It adds a flavor I'd describe as "creamy" but that's my brain stuck on the fact it's called Cream Sherry. You can bet over the Easter holidays I'll be holed up somewhere reading about Sherry, which so far I've learned gets its name from a Spanish town which produces it, Jerez de la Frontera. Some people liken the flavor to Dr Pepper, so I conducted a private tasting to see if I could get Dr Pepper notes. I'll have to keep tasting to figure that out. Cream Sherry tastes much better than it smells. Honestly this Taylor brand is a bargain because I've tasted worse dessert wines at much higher price points. This will not be hard to use up!

Poppy Seed Bundt Cake

But back to the cake. I'm pretty excited about the Sherry, though. But yes -- the cake. It would be a fun last minute cake for Easter. I'm storing it under a cake dome and will see how long it stays fresh. It will probably get better and better with age even though it's already pretty good. I'm looking forward to making this again, though realistically I'll probably make a third of the recipe and divide it among mini loaf pans.

A Few Tips Final Tips

• Soften the butter. Make sure the butter is very soft and squishy. You can soften it in the microwave using the Samantha Seneviratne method of standing the butter sticks on their ends, heating for 6 seconds, then flipping and heating again. You may have to practice with your microwave, but it magically softens the butter through and through.
• Weigh the eggs. In the shell, each egg should weigh 54 to 56 grams. My eggs were large eggs from Food Lion, but some weighed 70 grams each. This is not the first time that's happened, and it's kind of nice to get more egg for the money. Still, too many giant eggs could mess up an egg-heavy cake. So throw them on the scale and make sure each egg is around 50 to 54 grams in the shell. Cracked, that should be around 288 to 300 grams, but if you just weigh them whole you'll be fine.
• Sift your cake flour by putting it through a sieve or using an actual sifter. I don't always sift flour when a recipe says to, but cake flour can be lumpy. Plus aerating it, even after you've measured and weighed the flour, does seem to improve the texture. Also, don't substitute all-purpose. Use actual cake flour. I'll leave that as the last tip for now.

• Large Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Orange Poppy Seed Bread
• Sourdough Lemon Poppy Seed Biscotti

Recipe