This is an easy Hungarian dessert, to prepare fresh at the moment you need and to enjoy warm (but even when cooled down it’s good too) 🙂 and this time it was my wife to cook this recipe 🙂

Till I lived in Italy I never used poppy seeds, but here in Hungary is a common ingredient in several recipes, and this is one of those where they cannot be missing 🙂

It’s a bread pudding whose base is another typical Hungarian product, the Kifli (obviously not the salty ones), which is a typical crescent-shaped pastry (but in alternative it’s possible to make it with other types of soft breads/rolls too, as kàlacs/challah/zopf). The best thing is to do it yourself, or if you live in Hungary like us you could also buy it in some good bakeries (for better results I suggest to avoid those bakeries selling lower quality kifli made with margarine and maybe more additives, they are quite chewy and look usually unpleasantly rugged, moreover in those cases they would go against my philosophy about making homemade things which is about making recipes using good and carefully selected ingredients with no extra additives and not just about saying “I made it”, otherwise it wouldn’t be different/better than buying an already prepared average industrial product: so a waste of time from my point of view).

There are similar desserts also in Germany and Poland under the names of Makówki, Mohn Kließla, Mohn Klöße, Mohn Pilen. And in Hungary you can find it also with the name of Bobájka (slightly different, it’s not made with kifli but with another pastry).

The traditional Mákos Guba is usually prepared in larger oven pans, but in this case we decided to bake it already in single portions. It’s different the shape, but the recipe is still the same 🙂 (well, actually there are also more simple recipes, and the egg white sometimes it’s used differently, for example just placed on the top before baking, and also the jam is optional, but that’s how we like it).

Let’s see what you need.

INGREDIENTS (4-5 people):

• 4-5 kifli (depending on the size)
• 400 ml milk
• 200 ml cream
• 4 eggs
• 130 g sugar
• 50 g poppy seeds
• 1 vanilla bean
• jam

1. First of all take a pot and heat the milk with the cream and the vanilla bean (cut it and remove the pulp).
2. Then cut the kifli into slices of about 1-2 cm.
3. In a bowl whisk the yolks together with the sugar until fluffy and foamy. At this point pour slowly the warm milk and cream inside the eggs foam (remove the vanilla bean), whisk well to avoid lumps and then put it back to the heat, at low heat, and cook it until a bit thicker.
4. Then place the sliced kifli and the poppy seeds in a metallic bowl and pour all the warm liquid inside. Let it rest few minutes.
5. During this few minutes whisk the egg whites until foamy, and then add it to the other ingredients, taking care not to deflate the egg whites.
6. Then take all the small oven pots, spread some butter on the bottom and on the sides of each and pour poppy seeds all over.
7. Then pour inside the ingredients until half pot, then add some jam (1 spoon is enough), pour again the ingredients until almost the edge and top again with some jam.
8. Bake at 200 °C fan-assisted mode, for about 10-15 minutes, until it gets some nice color on the surface.
9. Serve it and enjoy 🙂 personally I prefer it hot/warm rather than cold.

(if you prefer you could use also honey rather than jam)