Samuel Taylor Coleridge Memorial  Poppyseed Cake with Optional Blindworm’s Sting
I got this from Chris Benders, probably during the 1970s. It has been slightly edited, mostly in the notes at the end.
				Procedure:

Preheat your oven to 350° F.
(The impoverished student ALWAYS preheats the oven.)

Mix together:
2	cups	sugar,
1&1/2	cup	[gently melted butter or] oil (see notes), and
up to 8	oz	poppyseeds (May be cooked &/or flavored; see notes).

Stir well and add:
4		eggs (The original doesn’t specify size; I use Large)
13	oz	evaporated milk. (See notes.)

Sift in:
3	cups	flour,
1&1/2	tsp	soda, and
1/4	tsp	salt.

Stir well and add
1&1/2	tsp	vanilla extract,
1/2	tsp	extract of bitter almond, and
1-2	very ripe	bananas (the optional sting of the title? see notes).

Mix thoroughly, and bake at 350° F in an angelfood-type tube pan for about 75 minutes. The cake should be brown on top when it is done.

					Notes:
•  “Poppy seed is expensive. 2 ounces are plenty.” (I personally don’t hold with this sentiment. As far as I’m concerned poppy seed is just ducky wonderful, and there is no reason to stint.) [Late addition: Sue suggests that this was probably from Chris’s grandmother, who grew up in the 1920s in (expectably) difficult circumstances.] I sometimes cook my poppyseeds with water, a bit of honey, and spices (tangerine peel, for example, and maybe cinnamon, or grains of paradise), but the original says nothing of this. It’s perfectly okay to just heave them in.
•  “Don’t worry about sizzling noises inside the cake – it sort of fries while it’s baking.”
•  “A large can of evaporated milk is 13 ounces.”
•  The original recipe called for TWO and a half cups oil. It’s your circulatory system, your digestion, ...and it works just fine if you cut back on the oil, even as much as 50%.
•  The amount of baking soda is a bit on the finicky side. (Remember to use a little less if you do this at significant altitude.)
•  I still haven’t figured out what is this thing about the blindworm’s sting. I should have asked Kris about it while that was still possible. Sigh. I thought it was the bananas, but maybe I’m wrong. In mid-2010 I made the cake with some cinnamon and a quantity of dried sour cherries (I’ve decided that these are optional blindworm eggs) instead of bananas; it was lovely.
•  “This is an oily cake – be careful what you put it on.”
•  “This is a very large cake – let everyone help eat it.”