Poppy Seed Roll Loaf

This one's for Urvashi!

After last weekend's joyful stollen my thoughts once again turned to a sweet loaf to enjoy on a Sunday afternoon with a cup of tea.  Lacking marzipan, but with an abundance of poppy seeds I turned my focus to a rolled poppy seed loaf.

The rest of this post is going to be fast and simple and to the point - Alfie has just woken up, so I need to get up to him before he manages to further his attempts at bookcase basejumping.

Ingredients;
350g bread flour
3g salt (don't scrimp on it here Urvashi!)
25g caster sugar
10g dry yeast/20g fresh yeast
120g milk
1 egg, beaten
50g butter, melted
115g icing sugar
lemon juice
water
almonds

Warm your milk.  Add the yeast.  In a bowl add the flour, salt & caster sugar.  Once the yeast has done its thing, add the milk, egg and butter to the bowl.  Mix together, turn out onto your worksurface and knead until nice and elastic.  Clean the bowl, gather your dough into a ball, and place the dough in the bowl and cover with clingfilm.  Leave to double.

Whilst the dough goes about its business make the filling.  Get about 120g poppy seeds and pour boiling water over them.  Once cooled, strain through a fine sieve.  Melt about 50g butter in a pan, add the poppy seeds and cook for a minute or two.  Remove from the heat and add 75g caster sugar, 50g ground almonds, 50g candied peel, 75g raisins and 1/2 tsp of cinnamon.  Leave to cool.

Once the dough had doubled in bulk turn it out onto your worksurface, knock back and spread out into a shape roughly the size of a magazine page.  Spread the filling over the dough, leaving a little gap around the edge, and then roll up from one of the long edges.  Place on a lightly floured baking sheet and cover with lightly oiled clingfilm.  Leave to double.

Get your oven warmed to 190 degrees and once the dough is ready bake for 30 minutes.  Cool on a wire rack.

To finish mix the icing sugar with about a tablespoon of the lemon juice and add whatever water might be required to give a nice glaze that just runs off the back of a spoon.  Drizzle said glaze over the loaf and add a few almonds to make it all look pretty.

This recipe is winner.  Alfie says so.  He even prefers it to pecan pie!  Speaking of the 'child of max doom', I'd better go get him up now ...