So, it turns out that you need a dedicated poppy seed grinder to grind poppy seeds. I tried using a blender, both with an without liquids without any luck. Lots of movement inside the blender, but no actual grinding going on. Apparently a coffee/spice grinder works, but my spice grinder can only handle a few tablespoons at a time. Not really practical when you have 250g of poppy seeds to grind! I've been told a meat grinder can be made to work if you use the finest plate and push down very hard. But I don't have one of those either. My grain mill might've worked, but I didn't really want to disassemble it to clean out the wheat and put the steel burrs in. In the end I just ended up using whole poppy seeds. The texture, of course, was different from what poppy seed filling is supposed to be like, but it seemed fine otherwise.

A word of warning: taste your poppy seeds before using them! When you're just scattering a few on the crust of your baked goods it doesn't matter so much. Even mixing a few tablespoons into the batter, the flavour and quality of the seeds doesn't matter that much. When you're making poppy seed filling though, the quality really matters. If your seeds taste bitter, that will come through strongly in the filling. Taste you seeds first! Make sure you have good ones.

Kolaches: top centre and bottom left with poppy seed filling

Poppy Seed Filling

Slightly adapted from Budapest Cooking Class

Ingredients

• 125mL milk
• 100g icing (powdered/confectioners') sugar
• 250g poppy seeds, ground¹
• 1 tsp. lemon zest
• 2 Tbsp. raisins (optional)

Directions

1. Sift icing sugar into milk and bring to a boil.
2. Remove from heat and stir in ground poppy seeds, lemon zest, and raisins (if using).
3. Cool completely before using to fill your baked goods.

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¹ You will need a poppy seed grinder to achieve this. If you don't have one, the filling can be made with whole poppy seeds, but the texture will be quite different. ^Back