Christmas is here again. I love festive period, I’m always full of energy and lots of plans where we have to go, what we have to do…. Specially in the kitchen! 

My boys like baking with me, they can help more and more year by year! Some weeks before Christmas they usually ask: Mummy, when can we bake gingerbread house, biscuits, and cakes?

We’ll spend Christmas in Budapest of course, we are waiting for meet all of our family who are missed so much….

I’m sure I won’t have to cook as Mum, My sister, and My Mother-in law will do that instead of me. 

But in these last days I decided to make something special which is very traditional hungarian at Christmas. We usually eat fish, turkey and  pork, sometimes duck, and  in the dessert we always use ground poppy seeds. Now when I’m writing these sentences I’m wondering that it’s quite interesting how I could get ground poppy seeds here in UK…. it’s not very common here, and I haven’t seen any machine that could ground poppy seeds… This pack came with me last time in my luggage and at home grounder is a very cheap and common kitchen tool. If You have any idea how I could find a grounder here, please share with me!

Prune and poppy seed is not a very common combination but very delicious. Meanwhile poppy seeds and lemon together are a winning pair! 

I wish all of You Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! I hope I see You here next Year!

Ingredients for a 21cm  diameter cake tin :

First of all it’s quite important at this batter that both the eggs and butter need to be room temperature, so please remove them from the fridge quite far ahead.

I cover the bottom of tin with baking sheet. Butter the bottom and side of tin, then place 250 gr pitted prunes in halves in a circle shape on the bottom.

Preheat oven to 180 C. Dice 100 gr prunes, place in a pan with wine and cinnamon. Cook on medium for a few minutes, until prunes adsorb liquid. Then set aside and leave to cool.

Mix butter with sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one and mix well. Add vanilla as well. In a bowl mix the flour, poppy seeds, baking soda, salt, lemon zest.
Add the flour mixture spoon by spoon to the butter mixture. Use a wire whisk or wooden spoon. Add the yoghurt at the end, but don’t overmix the butter. It’s not  aproblem, if he butter is not totally smooth, it will smoothen in the oven. Bake about 25-30 minutes, or until skewer comes out clean. 

Serve with vanilla custard.