Poppy seed desserts?

Hard nose, do you mean bread rolls with poppyseed on them? Those are not a dessert, which is what OP is interested in, and the seeds aren't ground.

Yeah, I agree...coffee grinder is necessary for the type of dessert you're looking at fear_rua.

Using them whole will defeat the purpose whisking the egg whites. (I suppose you could try it but it will be quite dense and probably not have the desired texture)

The Moosewood Cookbook has a wonderful Ukranian poppyseed cake .Seeds are soaked in hot milk but not ground.

"Hard nose, do you mean bread rolls with poppyseed on them?"

No.

"The Moosewood Cookbook has a wonderful Ukranian poppyseed cake .Seeds are soaked in hot milk but not ground."

Just had a look @ that-sounds very close to what I remember as a child.

I believe almost any recipe can be improved by soaking it in rum.

Poppy seed cake is very popular in Poland. It's the most popular cake (along with cheese cake) for Christmas and Easter.
If you want to make it the traditional way, you need to soak the poppy seeds in lukewarm water for a few hours and grind them three times. Usually meat grinder is used. The filling made from poppy seeds that way is light and moist.
These days, there are packages or cans with processed (ground) poppy seeds in supermarkets, so making poppy seed cake has become much less time consuming.

Thanks. There's a Polish shop near where I live but they only sell whole poppy seeds, and it doesn't seem worthwhile buying a coffee or meat grinder just for this...

Another link with poppy seed desserts - unfortunately only in Polish. You can use pictures for inspiration, if you manage to prepare your poppy seed pulp (ground poppy seeds), as it is called.
For the recipes try google translate.
There are several variations of poppy seed fillings, with wallnuts, raisins, bitter orange, etc

fear_rua,
You can try and ask at the Polish shop for masa makowa.

Interesting. It's more or less decipherable with Google translate.

#18--

We've been able to get poppy-seed filling in tins in North America four a couple of generations now. That may have been the secret to hardnose's mother's success.