Orange poppyseed cake is one of the favourites on the local bushwalking club afternoon tea menu. My mum, famous for her afternoon teas, cooks this regularly for them. It is up there with her chocolate caramel slice and other hearty delicacies, ready for a dozen or more hungry walkers to wolf down after a hard day in a rugged part of the Australian bush.

The bushwalkers’ orange poppyseed cake, iced and ready to eat

So here’s her recipe. It has egg (sorry), and she has no reason to modify it for her friends. Maybe I’ll get around to an egg-free version one day, but in the meantime, here it is.

Bushwalkers' orange poppyseed cake

• Servings: a dozen or more hungry bushwalkers
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

The recipe for this oh-so-famous orange poppyseed cake

What about the icing?

My mum didn’t need to write it down: she has enough cooking experience to just know these things. In her own words, you make the icing with about a cup and a half of icing sugar mixed with some orange juice and the grated rind of an orange (chopped into smaller pieces if you need to). The cake is better the next day, after the orange has had a chance to infuse right through the icing.