I was chatting with some folks at work about our quarantine baking and how its difficult to divide recipes to reduce the baking scale. When my senior VP mentioned that he makes popovers since they are delicious and you can make 2 at a time. Naturally I had to find out for myself exactly how easy they are to make and divide. Turns out, they were easy to divide and make a small batch. ( I made a third of the batch below and mine yielded 3, but could have been 2 if I was more generous). However a recipe that has been made famous for being “simple” had a large amount of technique involved. After 3 batches I finally figured out the secret to making this “simple recipe”. (Below I’m spilling these secrets!). I was able to show off the fruits of my labor to my work colleagues. The recipe below is a simple Popover recipe. I also recommend adding cheddar cheese and chives to make it more savory!
There are 3 secrets to popovers:
- All ingredients need to be ROOM TEMPERATURE, bordering the line of warm, otherwise steam will not build inside the popovers in enough time. To speed up the warming process: I heated up my milk in the microwave. Melted the butter in the microwave. Put the uncracked eggs in a bowl of warm water to bring up the temp.
- Spray the liners with cooking spray, too little spray or butter and the popovers will stick, too much and they will not rise enough.
- DO NOT open the oven once the batter is in the pans. Steam in the oven needs to build, and opening the oven prevents this from happening.
Popovers
Ingredients
- 1 ½ tablespoons unsalted butter melted
- 1 ½ cups flour
- ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
- ¾ teaspoon sugar
- 3 eggs room temperature
- 1 ½ cups milk room temperature
Instructions
- Generously grease aluminum popover pans or muffin tins with cooking spray. Place in the oven, then preheat the oven to 425F with the pans/tins inside the oven to heat up.
- Whisk together the eggs, milk, melted butter. Gradually add in the salt, sugar and four. Whisk until smooth. The batter should be thin like pancake batter.
- Fill the popover pans halfway and bake for 20. Then reduce oven temperature to 350F for 15 additional minutes. DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN WHILE THIS IS BAKING. Or else they will deflate.
