The other day, a friend of mine mentioned that she had a craving for lemon poppy seed “something” … muffins, pound cake, etc. I saw this recipe online, modified it a bit and had a go. It is Gluten Free and just uses almond meal instead of flour. If it were to make it again, I would cut down on the almond meal and make it half with regular wheat flour (seeing I have no real reason to be eating gluten free). Also, I think that a great improvement would be to use wild blueberries, instead of the cultivated ones, as they just don’t have enough flavor. But alas, it isn’t blueberry season until a few months from now, so I used what I had.
Ingredients
for the cake
4 cups almond meal / flour
3 tablespoons poppy seeds
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup ghee
1/2 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 large (or two small) lemons, both zest and juice, divided
3 large eggs
2 cups blueberries, divided
for the topping
1 cup Greek yogurt, drained
3 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla paste
Directions
Preheat oven to 350F. Liberally grease or spray a 9 inch spring form pan*. Place a parchment cake round in the bottom and spray again.
Combine almond flour, poppy seeds, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a large bowl and set aside. Heat ghee and honey in a sauce pan on very low heat until combined. Grate the zest from the lemon and add it to the honey and ghee mixture. Juice the lemon, reserve 1 tablespoon of the juice and add remaining juice to the honey and ghee mixture. Add this to the bowl with the dry ingredients. Beat the eggs and then fold them into the batter together with 1 cup of the blueberries. Stir gently around with a wooden spoon until combined. Put batter into the prepared pan.
Bake for about 40-50 minutes, or until golden on the outside and baked all way through (you can cover the cake with tin foil during the last 15 minutes of the baking time, if it starts looking too brown) . Remove from oven and let cool for at least 30 minutes before removing the sides. Meanwhile, start making the topping. Drain yogurt in a milk cloth or coffee filter for about 10 minutes. This is to make the yogurt less runny. Discard the water and combine the thick yogurt with honey, vanilla paste and the reserved lemon juice. Chill in the refrigerator until the cake is completely cooled. Once cooled, top the cake with an even layer of the topping and top with the remaining blueberries.
*You can also make this cake in a bundt style pan and just serve the cake with blueberries and yogurt on the side. In this photograph, I made a 6 1/2″ inch cake and have some leftover batter, from which I made a few muffins (also good).