By Melissa Clark, The New York Times
Growing up with poppy seed bagels, hamantaschen and muffins, I never realized that those little specks stuck in my teeth had anything to do with the louche haze of opium dens or the soporific scarlet fields of Oz. I figured there must be different poppies — one the stuff of muffins and cake, the other for trapping little girls like Dorothy in morphine oblivion. But they are one and the same.
It’s one of nature’s clever little metaphors that the seed pods of Papaver somniferum, as the opium poppy is known scientifically, ooze a sticky, intoxicating latex when young and green, yet shed their narcotic properties entirely as they ripen and mature. That’s when the tiny blue-black seeds are harvested, without so much as a hint of their younger, dreamier selves.
I’d sometimes wonder about Dorothy’s poppies when my grandmother and I made hamantaschen for Purim, grinding the seeds into an inky, oily paste. Stuffed into tricorn cookies, they were hard to tell apart from the similarly black prune-filled ones. I’d nibble a tiny smudge of filling before committing to a whole cookie, hoping for the seeds’ dusky, bittersweet flavor.
Muffins came later, in high school, along with slices of glazed lemon poppy seed pound cake. The seeds work differently in these desserts; instead of clumping into a sticky paste, they stay discrete — a crunchy stippling in yellow crumb. They taste different, too, with the lemon’s acidity brightening the seed’s concentrated earthiness.
I considered all of this as I was creating these poppy seed-speckled lemon bars, striving to combine the crispness of hamantaschen with the moistness of cake.
It turns out that using the same shortbread dough for the crust and topping does the trick, conveniently yielding cookies that are buttery-crisp on the bottom and soft in the center, where a layer of lemon curd meets the dough.
But the best bit is where the curd meets the edges of the pan, caramelizing into puckery candy. If you want to make the curd, I have a very easy recipe that can be done in about seven minutes in the microwave. But jarred curd works just as well. Or if you like you can substitute jam, which gives these bars a fruity snap, the kind that yields their own very good dreams.
Recipe: Lemon Poppy Seed Bars
These curd-filled treats split the difference between lemon bars and lemon poppy seed cake, with a shortbread-like crust and crumbly streusel topping studded with poppy seeds. If you don’t feel like making homemade lemon curd, store-bought works perfectly, or substitute thick fruit jam or marmalade.— MELISSA CLARK
Yield: 16 squares
Total time: 1 hour, plus at least 1-1/2 hours’ cooling time
Ingredients
- 1 cup/228 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for the pan
- 2/3 cup/130 grams sugar
- 3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- Finely grated zest of 2 lemons
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract (or 1/4 teaspoon almond extract)
- 2 1/4 cups/270 grams all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons poppy seeds
- 1 cup/240 grams lemon curd, homemade or store-bought
Preparation
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter an 8-inch square metal baking pan and line the bottom sides with parchment, leaving 1 inch of overhang all around.
2. Add sugar and salt to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add lemon zest and mix with the paddle attachment until the sugar is moist and fragrant, about 1 minute.
3. Add the butter and beat on medium speed until smooth, 1 to 3 minutes. Beat in the extract.
4. Turn off the mixer, add flour, then mix on low speed until combined, about 1 minute. Add poppy seeds and continue to mix on low until incorporated but still crumbly, about 1 minute (do not overmix the dough).
5. Transfer 1 cup of the crumbled dough to a small bowl. Transfer the remaining dough to the prepared pan and flatten into an even layer using the flat bottom of a glass or your hands. Spread the curd in an even layer over the surface of the crust and sprinkle with reserved dough, crumbling into pieces as you sprinkle.
6. Bake, rotating after 20 minutes, until the crumb topping is golden brown and the curd bubbles at the edges, 40 to 48 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely in the pan, at least 1-1/2 hours.
7. Use the parchment to lift the bars out of the pan onto a cutting board. Trim parchment off the edges and cut into 16 squares.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
The post These lemon-poppy seed bars are the stuff of dreams appeared first on Denver Post