You know how sometimes a coffee cake doesn’t have any coffee in it? It’s actually a cake to eat with coffee and the whole thing turns in to a disappointing experience?

Well, this is not that cake. A few weeks ago Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall published some coffee recipes in the Guardian and one of them was this cake, complete with coffee, poppy seeds and a very syrupy glaze/icing.

I can’t remember the last time I made a cake with poppy seeds in, even though I like them (both the poppy seeds and the cakes!) and I’m always thinking I should be a little more diverse in my cake making. Poppy seeds, like sesame seeds, are one of those things that can go off. They need to be stored in cool, dark places and used relatively quickly, otherwise they can go a bit rancid – and that’s not what you want in cake.

This is a simple recipe and is almost a one bowl wonder.

Begin by soaking, for at least 2 hours, 100g of poppy seeds in 80g of mascarpone (the recipe specifies sour cream, but I had mascarpone in the fridge). The poppy seeds soaked up all the mascarpone and it became quite a stiff mixture.

Preheat oven to 170°C and grease and baseline a 22cm spring form tin.

If you’re so inclined you can sift the dry ingredients first: 150g plain flour, 1 tsp bicarb, 1 tsp baking powder, ½ tsp of cinnamon and a pinch of salt. If you’re making this by hand (that is, without the kitchen trickery that is a food processor or a stand mixer) make the effort. Even with gadgets to hand, I’m starting to do more and more sifting …

Now cream 150g of unsalted butter with 250g of caster sugar, before mixing in three eggs, one at a time. Ensure each egg is well beaten in before adding the next. Mix in a 1 tsp vanilla essence and 40mL of espresso coffee. If you don’t have a coffee maker to hand, make up some really really strong coffee and use that.

Add in the flour a bit at a time, alternating this with the poppy seed/mascarpone mix. Mix until just combined and then spoon in to the tin and bake for 35-40 minutes (until the toothpick comes out clean).

Allow to cool for a little in the tin and then cool completely on a cake rack.

Now, for the icing HFW suggests using 125g of icing sugar (definitely sift this – it makes your life so much easier and your icing a lot less lumpy) and 50 mL of espresso. I did this but we found this icing too runny and, by the time it had soaked through the cake, it made the whole thing far too sweet. So I suggest making your favourite icing and adding a bit of coffee to it. Or dust it with icing sugar before serving – the poppy seeds make it quite an attractive cake even without icing so there’s no need to go mad.

I personally thought that the cake had a good coffee flavour which was accentuated by the cinnamon. The universal opinion was that it was too sweet and I really regretted making the icing.

So while I’ll definitely be making the cake again I’ll be passing on the icing.