Poppy Seeds and Poppy-Seed Filling

Poppy seeds, which are often sprinkled on breads and pastries, make a delicious filling for Danish pastries and the traditional Jewish pastry, Hamantaschen. Filling made from the blue-black poppy seeds adds a striking visual note to many pastries.

These seeds are from the Papaver somniferum, the same poppy from which opium is derived, but are completely harmless. The drug is a concentration of the juices that exude from the slashed seed pod. (The red and orange garden and wil