It’s summertime and so begins our obsession with adding lemons to as many recipes as possible! This Lemon and poppyseed cake deserves a sunny location and inspires a taste of long hazy summer days. We have based this recipe on a cake published by Gaz Oakley, the Avant-Garde Vegan. We are in love with his website and have a copy of his Vegan 100 book at MoaAlm.
Lemon and Poppy Seeds are a popular pairing, we already have a cheesecake recipe on our website with the same combination. Do you realise that athletes are recommended not to consume poppyseeds before competing as they may affect the results of a drug test? Although poppy seeds cannot be used as a narcotic, due to very low levels of opium they do have enough do occasionally fool drug tests. We never drug test anyone on our activity holidays so we can all safely have as many slices of this zesty summery cake as possible. The only performance affected may be the ability to float like a feather in the wood burning hot tub in Austria.
275g Self Raising Flour
100g Caster Sugar
1 tsp Baking Powder
Zest and juice of 1 organic Lemon
2 tbs Poppy Seeds
240ml Almond Milk
100ml Rapeseed Oil
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
Topping
2 Tins Coconut Cream
2 Tbs Icing Sugar
1 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste
Lemon slices to decorate and maybe fresh berries.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line 20cm Loose Bottom Cake tin with greaseproof paper.
Add to a large mixing bowl, the flour, sugar, baking powder, poppy seeds & lemon zest, mixing well. Stir in the milk, oil, vanilla & lemon Juice, careful not to over mix. Pour the cake batter into the cake tin carefully. Give the tin a tap on the surface to remove any pockets of air then place the tin into the oven for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, test to see if it's cooked all the way through. Allow the cake to cool slightly before removing it from the tin, leaving it to cool completely.
Whip the coconut cream using an electric whisk with the sugar & vanilla. Top the cake with the cream and very thin slices of lemon.
We have also sliced the cake to add a fresh strawberry jam layer in the middle for extra summer indulgence...
PS: If you make our Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake, don’t forget to tag us on Instagram and use the #relaxinglyactive hashtag. We would love to see your take on our recipes!
Enjoy and if you have lots of lemons, then our other favourite lemon cake is the Lemon and Courgette Cake.
Happy Baking!