Lemon poppy seed gluten free waffles

I'm on a pretty big waffle kick at the moment as I find them a great way to start the day. I can make a whole batch and then wrap and freeze them and take them out when I feel the need. Anything that makes my life easier when I have to wake up at 5.45am is always good.

I'm also trying to experiment with gluten-free eating so I was particularly excited yesterday when I found a small bag of gluten-free flour in Ranch market yesterday. I also wanted to try a different flavour for my waffles as mostly I've just been doing a banana cinnamon flavour. So remembering my little bag of poppy seeds in the fridge and how great poppy seeds are in all things lemon I figured that was the way to go.

Waffles can be whipped up pretty quickly and once you have a waffle maker (naturally!) you just pop your cup full of batter in there and let the maker do all the work. These are crispy waffles with a soft interior. I like my waffles crispy so I tend to cook mine on a higher setting. They are also light and I don't get that ridiculously full feeling from eating one.

Lemon Poppy Seed Gluten Free Waffles

1 3/4 cups gluten free flour 

1 tsp baking powder

1 Tbsp molasses sugar

2 tsp poppy seeds

3/4 cup milk (almond, soy, regular, up to you)

1 tsp vinegar

Zest of a lemon

Juice of a lemon

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

Put all your dry ingredients into a bowl and whisk briefly to make sure there are no lumps.

Mix the vinegar and milk and leave to curdle. Add eggs, zest and juice of lemon, olive oil and vanilla.

Pour wet ingredients into dry and mix until combined.

Cook according to your waffle maker.

Enjoy with blueberries, strawberries or just nude with a drizzle of maple syrup. A great start to the day!

Orange poppy seed Bundt cake...orangelicious!

I baked this awhile ago and realised I hadn't posted the photos. This cake was delicious with a rich orange flavour and the addition of those lovely blue poppy seeds gave it a real earthiness. Although the glaze was a simple orange and icing sugar mixture, when I make this again I would go for a marmalade glaze instead. I think marmalade would make it tangy and particularly pretty with the orange rind in it. I do have the recipe somewhere on my phone but I'll have to dig it out. I do remember it being quite similar to the lemon Bundt cake recipe I used but of course all lemon ingredients substituted with orange. The key is to find delicious, juicy oranges for that rich flavour and we are lucky at the moment in that we are inundated in the supermarket with amazing big Spanish oranges. There was a fight between household members to slurp the remaining juice out of the squeezer it was that good! By the time I got around to trying to photograph the inside of the cake, well, you can see what was left!

Lemon poppy seed muffins...don't eat too many!

Ok so there is nothing like a lovely muffin to kick start your day. I saw some lemons lying in the fruit bowl and thought I'd make some muffins to have ready in the morning. As I was browsing the Internet for inspiration I saw some muffins that had poppy seeds in them and how well they seemed to pair with lemon. So, why not? My dad came back from the local supermarket with blue poppy seeds! Blue? Yes indeed. The poppy it would seem comes in many shades and sizes. So I did a bit of a google in the hope of finding that the blue variety were perfectly acceptable ingredients in a muffin. Well, not only did I find that the blue hued poppy seed is fine in baked foods, I found something far more interesting...

Although the drug opium is produced by "milking" latex from the unripe fruits ("seed pods") rather than from the seeds, all parts of the plant can contain or carry the opium alkaloids, especially morphine and codeine. This means that eating foods (e.g., muffins) that contain poppy seeds can result in a false positive for opiates in a drug test. However the results provided will not be the same for someone who abuses opiates.

Well, 'phew' to that, is all I can say! But, how interesting too! I wonder if I ate all 12 muffins if I would test wickedly high on the opiate scale. So fascinating that something that tiny could be so potent. Of course, I clicked here and there and was fascinated by the studies done on the mere poppy seed. It's actually banned in some countries! 

Anyway, I digress, the muffin was delicious (or was that the morphine talking?). With Greek yoghurt in the recipe, it made the muffin incredibly moist. 

I did the drizzle on the top as the muffin itself had a lovely strong lemon flavour and wasn't too sweet so the drizzle just added an extra zing. When I cut into it, those blue poppy seeds looked fabulous dotting the muffin here and there.

They didn't overpower the muffin and instead I found gave it an 'earthy' taste which I really liked. During my research, I discovered that poppy seeds aid sleep. So I ate my muffin and did my taste test before heading to bed. So here's to a good nights sleep. Maybe we can rearrange the world view so muffins can be a supper snack instead...just make sure you don't forget to go heavy on the poppy seeds!