pop! goes the popover

Around 5:15 last night, I invited my in-laws to dinner on the spur of the moment. They just returned from three weeks in France (lucky ducks!), so they couldn't possibly have any food in the house, plus it was a good chance to catch up. I hadn't planned much in the way of dinner - grilled chicken, cous cous, and salad - so I decided to throw together some popovers to round things out a bit.

Popovers are great. They're incredibly easy to make, use common ingredients, and because they're not served often, I always think of them as a special treat. I'm not sure how the science works, but the very thin milk/egg/flour batter puffs up into a hollow, eggy roll. They taste best just out of the oven, and they're delicious plain or with butter, honey, or jam. Leftovers don't really hold up, but they can be revived with a minute or two in the toaster.


You can see how dark brown these are. They were just this side of too done, but luckily, they tasted great. In my defense, the recipe says to set the timer for 30 minutes and don't open the oven. I set my timer for 28 minutes, but apparently even that was too long. Next time, I'll at least peek through the window around 25 minutes.

I used Paula Deen's recipe (which, surprisingly, contains no butter! I didn't think she had any no-butter recipes), but I looked at several recipes around the web and the ingredients and proportions are very standard. It claimed to make 12 popovers, but I got 16 using a standard muffin tin.

Popovers
12-16 rolls
4 eggs
2 cups milk (I used 1%)
2 cups (8 1/2 ounces) flour
1 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 450F. It's really important that the oven is hot.

Beat the eggs well with a whisk. Whisk in milk, then flour and salt. Mix until the flour is incorporated, but do not overmix. Just try to break up any large lumps of flour.

Grease muffin tin cups and fill 3/4 full with batter. Bake for 25-30 minutes without opening the oven door. Remove popovers from tin right away and serve hot. They can be served plain or with butter, honey, or jam.

Notes:
There are all sorts of tips and tricks to be found online. Take 'em or leave 'em.
- Some people say baking with nonfat or lowfat milk can make the popovers brown more quickly, so they suggest reducing the oven temperature by 25 degrees.
- Another recipe calls for baking for 15 minutes at 450, then reducing the heat to 375F for another 20ish minutes. Given that mine were so dark, I might try that next time.
- Others debate the best way to grease the tins. I used cooking spray, which worked fine, but you can use butter or oil, too. They also recommend preheating the tins.
- One recipe suggests piercing each popover with the tip of a knife to keep them from collapsing. I didn't have an issue with this, but it's an interesting idea.

Print this recipe.

Comments

I love muffins ... you can have the recipe for the muffins with chocolate chips? thanks and congratulations for the blog ... delicious;-)
Jami said…
@gli amici: sure - I like the King Arthur Flour All-Star Muffin recipe. If you want to give me an email address, I'll send it to you.
thanks a lot ... gennarocardamone@hotmail.com ... again thanks to the availability ... see you soon