Poppy Seeds Strudel

All the poppy seed lovers, this one is my favorite poppy seeds dessert, ever! Period!

Usually, poppy seeds are used in desserts with yeast dough or shortbread pastry. I love them all, don’t get me wrong, but this one takes the win 😉
If you aren’t already a poppy seed lover, after you try this, you might be. Welcome to the club! 😃

This is an unusual strudel made with very liquid poppy seed batter and phyllo sheets. Since every sheet gets smeared, the cake is very soft, moist and not too sweet. Just perfect.
Poppy seeds are not your typical ingredient. It’s very popular in Eastern and Central Europe, but not in many other cultures. Other cultures usually aren’t very familiar with it or aren’t used to its particular flavor.
This recipe packages it in a way that it’s not only palatable, people can’t stop eating 😋

This is my go to dessert when I need to feed a lot of people, such as when I go to a party or am hosting one of my own. It’s a hit among our multicultural friends here in Canada. Everyone loves it, form our friends from Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Iran to Venezuela and Brazil. Give it a try, you will be pleasantly surprised!

Ingredients

  • 250 g (1 3/4 cup) ground poppy seeds
  • 15 sheets of phyllo pastry
  • 500 ml (2 cups) liquid yogurt
  • 375 g (1 3/4 cup) granulated sugar
  • 150 ml (1/2 cup) vegetable or similar oil
  • 20 g (2 tbsp) baking powder or two little packages
  • 20 g (2 tbsp) vanilla sugar or two little packages
  • 4 eggs

Preparation

  1. Preheat the oven to 170 °C (340 °F).
  2. Mix the eggs with both sugars in stand up electric mixer or with hand electric mixer until foamy.
  3. Add oil and mix a bit more.
  4. At the end, add the remaining ingredients: baking powder, poppy seeds and yogurt. Mix until combined. The mixture is extremely liquid, don’t get scared. This is the way it should be.
  5. Grease a large cookie sheet.
  6. Divide the sheets to make three broad rolls (5 sheets for each out of 3 rolls).
  7. Smear the mixture thinly over each sheet. Roll up the sheets flat in the width of 8-10 cm (1/3 pan).
  8. Coat them with oil and bake them for about half an hour until golden brown.

Have you ever cooked or baked with poppy seed? What is your favorite way to use poppy seeds?