Not quite as pretty as a poppy(seed)

Grocery stores are dangerous places to be when you’re hungry.  You can’t be blamed for your actions or how many goodies end up in your basket.  So of course, Boy and I couldn’t blame ourselves when we ended up with lemon poppyseed cake amongst our veggies and fruit.  And naturally that meant we had to try it for a Toas-Tite.

Ingredients

• Lemon poppyseed cake (store bought works just fine but homemade is always better!)
• Strawberries, sliced (2-3 if you are mixing with raspberries, 4-6 if you’re just going with strawberries)
• Raspberries (15 if you are mixing with strawberries, 30 if you’re going straight)
• Butter
  

Directions

1. To start, slice off two pieces of your tasty poppyseed cake.  If the pieces aren’t wide enough to completely cover the Toas-Tite, we recommend rolling it out with a rolling pin.  We had a bit of crumbling with our poppyseed cake but just patted it back in to patch up the holes.
2. Carefully butter one side of each piece of cake.  If you don’t want to risk any more crumbling, you can also use non-stick spray or melted butter on the inside of the Toas-Tite.
3. Place your cake in the Toas-Tite and get ready to add your berries!
4. Stack your raspberries and strawberries inside the clamshell.  Given the sweet nature of the cake, additional sugar is optional.  If your berries are a bit tart or if you simply have a sweet tooth, go for that extra sprinkle.
   
5. Close up the Toas-Tite and trim the excess cake from the edges.
6. Toast away over high heat for approximately 10 minutes, flipping the grill regularly.
7. Then enjoy!

Notes from the kitchen

Well…the truth is….lemon poppyseed cake is delicious but it’s not as Toas-Tite worthy as regular bread.  The crumbly nature of the cake and the juiciness of the berries work against the toasty, seal-y nature of the Toas-Tite.  Boy and I actually toasted our first poppyseed Toas-Tite over medium heat for about 18 minutes.  At that temperature and timing, we got a nice toast on the cake, but the berries were so juicy that the Toas-Tite sandwich fell apart when we took it out of the grill.  Over higher heat for less time, the berries have less time to cook so your sandwich has a better chance to stick together.

Another option to avoid soaking through your cake is to use fruit jam, rather than fresh berries.

But either way, whether you use fruit or jam, or whether your Toas-Tite is perfectly sealed or not, poppycake and berries are good n’ delicious!