Lemon Lavender Poppy Seed Pound Cake (Gluten-free)

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I love poppy seeds. Even as a small child, I was more than happy to eat as many as I could get a hold of. My absolute favorite back then were the poppy seed pinwheel cookies my grandmother would make around the holidays. That probably seems like an odd thing for a kid to pick as their favorite, but then again I was a bit of an odd kid. But it wasn’t just the sweets I was fond of. If I was given an option for a poppy seed bun for a hot dog, you can bet that I took it, and rarely did I allow any of the seeds that fell off remain on my plate. I would spend as long as it took to hunt down each and every one of those tiny black specks and eat them, one at a time if that’s what it took. Sometimes I would even sneak a small handful of them out of the jar in my mother’s spice cabinet and down them when no one was looking.

I may be a bit less obsessive with my poppy seeds as an adult, but make no mistake that I still love them. So when I received a decent-sized jar of blue poppy seeds as a free bonus item from Penzeys some time back, I was plenty pleased. But after it spent quite a bit of time hanging out unopened in my spice cabinet, I realized that I didn’t really have any recipes that called for poppy seeds. I resolved to change that.

Chele, on the other hand, wasn’t the biggest fan of poppy seeds when I met here. While I believe I have opened her up to them a bit since then, I still don’t think she regards them with anywhere near the esteem that I do. But I did learn early on that she IS a fan of lemon poppy seed baked goods, so when I suggested that we make some muffins or cake so I could put a dent in that jar, she was quickly on board. We eventually settled on attempting a pound cake, and making it gluten-free so that she could partake. We also opted to not only make it a lemon poppy seed pound cake, but a lavender lemon poppy seed pound cake (go check out our Lavender Lemonade post if you want to know why this was an inevitable decision for us). We have made a number of different types of gluten-free cakes and muffins since Chele’s celiac diagnosis, but this would be the first time either of us attempted to adapt a pound cake. We went in prepared to make several attempts in order to dial in the consistency and texture.

We were prepared, yes. But it turned out that preparation was unnecessary. Our very first attempt buried all of our expectations. It developed a fantastically crispy/chewy crust on the outside, but the interior was perfectly moist, with exactly the right texture and density. The lavender and lemon flavors burst through wonderfully, and it was all tied together by the subtle earthiness and distinctive “pop” of the poppy seeds. This wasn’t just a great gluten-free pound cake, it was a great pound cake, period. Chele and I were already halfway through the loaf when we realized that we weren’t going to be improving on this recipe and had better take some pictures for the blog while we still had some left!