Orange Poppy Seed Cake

Ingredients:

50g poppy seed
60ml milk
185g unsalted butter
225g castor sugar (I reduced to 200g)
1 tbsp finely grated orange zest (omitted)
3 grade A eggs
175g self-raising flour, sifted
50g plain flour, sifted
50g ground almond
100ml orange juice (I used Sunquick)

1. Butter a kugelhoft tin (the cake cooks more thoroughly) but you can use any baking tin and preheat the oven to 180C. (I reduced to 170C using Healsio Steam Oven to bake).

2. Combine poppy seeds and milk. Leave to stand for 20 minutes.

3. Cream butter, sugar and zest(if using) till light and fluffy.

4. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until well combined.

5. Stir in sifted flours, ground almond, orange juice and milk with the poppy seeds. Mix well. (I combined almond to flour; orange juice to poppy seed/milk. Then I stirred dry and wet ingredients alternately, starting with flour, then liquid and finished with flour.)

6. Pour batter into prepared tin and bake for 50 minutes or till a skewer comes out clean. (I baked at 45 minutes using Healsio Steam Oven.)


Results:

The cake 'fluffed' up nicely to about 6cm ! Although I had reduced the sugar from 225g to 200g, I still find it too sweet for my liking. I'll reduce it to 175g next time.

I don't know if I should reduce the baking time to 40 minutes (Healsio Steam Oven), the sides are a bit too 'brown' for me (though Faiz says the cake is perfect as it is).
Oh, well ....