Poppy Seed Tart

This is a very classical German tart, but was never made in my family because my dad, the baker in our family, doesn't like poppy seeds. So I thought I'd give it a try.

Ingredients:

9 inch (26 cm) springform

Some grease

Parchment paper

Crust:

200 g wheat flour

1 leveled teaspoon baking powder

100 g sugar

1 package vanilla sugar or some vanilla aroma

1 pinch of salt

1 egg (optional)

1 tablespoon milk

100 g butter or margarine (1 stick)

Filling:

750 ml (3 cups) milk

125 g butter

150 g semolina flour

150 g poppy seeds

150 g sugar

1 package vanilla sugar or some vanilla aroma

125 g Quark or Greek yoghurt (Fage or Chobani brand)

1 egg (optional)

50 g almond flour

50 g raisins

2 tablespoons rum

Decoration:

Some confectioner's sugar

1. For the crust: Mix flour and baking powder in a bowl. Add remaining ingredients for crust and mix with an electric hand mixer (knead hooks) until a dough has formed. Shape into a ball with hands, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 30 min.

2. In the meantime prepare the filling: Bring milk and butter in a stovetop pot to a boil. Mix semolina flour and poppy seeds in a bowl. Remove pot with milk from stovetop and stir in semolina-poppy seed mixture. Let cool for 10 min.

3. Grease bottom of springform. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 F).

4. Roll one half of the dough onto springform bottom. Take the remaining half of dough, form a long rod, and line the edge of the springform. Flatten rod and form an edge of about 3 cm (1.5 inches).

5. Mix sugar, vanilla sugar or aroma, yoghurt, egg, almond flour, raisins and rum with poppy seed mixture. Add mixture to springform and bake for about 1 h. (Put springform on parchment paper because sometimes fat can leak out from the springform).

6. Let cake cool on a rack, remove the springform edge, and sprinkle some confectioner's sugar on top.

Comments:

1. With some people suffering from egg allergies I stopped using eggs in these types of pie crusts. Also, without the egg no chilling of the dough is necessary.

2. Regular or ground poppy seeds can be used in this recipe.

3. To add a little twist, a pear can be added to the filling: Peel and core pear, use a cheese grater to grate pear, then add to poppy seed mixture after boiling.

4. I only used half of the butter the recipe requests for the filling, and I consider leaving it out entirely next time.