Poppy seeds+Lemon=Magic

As I write this post, I am literally sitting in the Midwestia airport, enjoying the free wifi, joyfully anticipating my business class seat on this afternoon's flight to NYC. Let me just say, BE NICE to the airport check-in people. They can make all the difference in your travel experience. Take this morning: Prof. Hubs had to teach at noon so even though my flight is not until 2:30 this afternoon, I was dropped off at the airport at 11:oo am. When I checked in I made a few jokes with the check-in lady...who, I suppose, appreciated it. And bumped my ticket. To business class. And made my day :)

Not too shabby... (To Julie at Airtran-thank you for being such a sweetheart-you've completely made the horror of waiting in an airport for 3.5 hours a joy now that I know warm cookies and ample leg room await!)

I had opportunity this past weekend to bake not just one, but 2 prototypes of my new favorite cake: The luscious lemon poppy seed cake. I must say, it's unlike any other lemon poppyseed recipe I could find and I looked in all the usual places. I was thinking to myself,

"I want a lemon poppyseed cake with a tight crumb, a moist texture, not too sweet and a nice lemon-y fragrance... Sort of like my apple cake, but not apple... So what did I do? I played! And I came up with a perfectly wonderful Lemon poppy seed cake. In fact, several of those who ate it said it was the best lemon cake they had ever tasted!!!

With that introduction, I give you:

Desperate Housediva's Luscious Lemon Poppy Seed Cake

1.75 cups sugar

3 C reg flour (I used half white whole wheat, half regular white)
1 tsp salt
4 eggs
1 Tbsp vanilla
2 Tbsp lemon zest (zest 2 lemons)
1 Tb baking powder
1 C canola oil
1/4 C orange juice

Juice from 1/2 lemon (make sure to remove seeds!!!)

1/2 cup poppyseeds (=3 small containers of poppyseeds)

Preheat oven to 350 (in my crazy oven, I had better luck with 325...)
Sift flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in large mixing bowl. Make a well in the center and pour oil, eggs, orange juice, lemon zest, lemon juice, vanilla, and poppy seeds. Combine until well blended.
Grease 10'' tube (bundt) pan. Fill pan with cake batter. Spread the top with a spatula to even.

Bake for about 1 hour or until spaghetti strand comes out clean. Cover top with aluminum foil if it begins to overbrown.

Allow to cool to lukewarm before turning out onto serving plate.
Freezes well.

These are the lemons who sacrificed their zest for the good of the cake:

Here is the zest they yielded:

I like to leave a few scrapes of batter for tasting purposes... strictly business, of course...

Here's a close-up of the last few bites...