Boys of Cooking

Poppy seeds are difficult to grind unless you have a specialty grinder. It’s kind of like a manual coffee mill, but you really can’t use a coffee grinder. I have tried. ♦ATTNIf you don’t have such a grinder, look for another recipe that soaks and cooks the poppy seeds as the following will not work.

In a poppy-seed mill, grind

•  8 ounces (about 1½ cups poppy seeds)

Heat the following ingredients to dissolve sugar without boiling the milk.

• ¾ cup milk
• 4 TBL butter
• ⅔ cup sugar (or more to taste)
• pinch of salt

Remove the mixture from the heat. In a large bowl, beat

• 2 eggs
• ¼ cup milk

In small amounts, add more and more of the milk mixture to the eggs, but ♦ATTNnot too much at once or the eggs will cook. The idea is to gradually warm up the eggs and combine them with the milk. Once you have added half the milk to the eggs, pour it all back into the pan on the heat and let it cook until thickened into a smooth custard, but ♦ATTNdon’t let it approach a boil! The temperature is about 175º F; the custard will just start to steam when it is time to take it off the heat. Remove from the heat, stir in the ground poppy seeds and let the mixture cool. It can keep a couple days in the refrigerator.

Note that sometimes I’ve just added sugar and milk to the ground poppy seeds to make a filling. It’s not as satisfying but in a pinch it works. If you need a non-dairy filling you can replace the milk with soy milk. Or, if you don’t mind a sweeter filling, just mix corn syrup with ground poppy seeds and don’t even bother making a custard.

Adapted from a recipe from Olga’s Flavor Factory.