Guest Author - Marianne Gibson

Poppy seed roulet (or swiss roll)

Poppy seeds are widely used in sweet treats from Germany and Central Europe right over to Russia and down to the Middle East. This Russian recipe calls for a sweet yeast dough, rolled up around a sweet, sticky mass of poppy seeds and honey.

For the filling
150g Poppy seeds
100g Honey
50g caster sugar

Choosing your honey. Obviously, a runny honey will work best in this recipe but anyone who’s been to the Annual Moscow Honey Market will tell you that there’s more to it than that. Spring flower honey is light and full of vitamins; Lime blossom honey has a delicate citrus tang. For this cake, I prefer the stronger, darker types, like chestnut or walnut blossom. Experiment!

For the dough
500g plain flour(strong flour, for yeast baking)
50g butter or margarine
200 ml milk
3 egg yolks
Dried yeast (check the pack for how much to use for 500g of flour)
100g Caster sugar (vanilla sugar makes a nice sweet dough, to make this, simply keep a vanilla pod in your sugar jar for a month or so)

Sieve roughly a third of the flour into a large, warm mixing bowl. In a pan, warm the milk to about 35 degrees, then whisk in the yeast with a fork. Cover this and leave it in a warm place for 15 minutes, or until there are a good couple of centimetres of froth on top. Whisk this mixture and mix it into the flour. NB some packs of yeast will advise mixing straight in with the flour instead, then stirring in the warm liquid. This should work too, though I personally prefer the other way.

Stir well, cover with a tea towel and leave in a warm place until it has risen to about double its height. This is your ‘Opara’, which the yeast ferments in, from which the dough is made later. This technique is used quite a lot in Russian yeast cookery.

During this waiting time, and the second stage, you can be making the filling. This is quite simple. Place the poppy seeds in a large sturdy bowl and pour over enough boiling water to easily cover them. Leave this for 40 minutes, during which time the seeds will soften and plump out. Drain off the water, pressing the seeds down to get the last drops, or squeezing them in a muslin cloth. Now you can either use a pestle, or a blender to pulverize the seeds as you gradually add the honey. The seeds do not need to end up completely smooth.

When the opara has about doubled, stir in the sugar, salt and egg yolks, mix, and gradually add in the rest of the flour. Melt the fat and work this into the dough. Knead well (about 5 minutes), cover and leave it in a warm place to prove. Again, you need it to roughly double in size.

On a floured surface carefully roll out the dough into a 1cm thick rectangle. Evenly spread the filling on the top, leaving a small margin all around the edge. Taking one end of the rectangle, roll it up like a swiss roll. Place seam side down on a greased baking sheet and brush the top with a little milk. Leave it for 20-30 minutes to rise, then bake in a hot oven for 25 minutes or until a pale gold on the outside.

The result is a delightfully sticky yet nutritious tea bread, which you can serve warm or cold in slices after dinner, or with a cup of tea.

Priyatnogo appetita!