Having at last perfected my popover recipe, I thought I’d share it with you, my fellow Dopers. For those of you who don’t know what a popover is, it’s a type of puffed-up bread that looks like this. It’s a bit of a complicated recipe, thought there are only 4 ingredients, so follow the directions as exactly as you can, or they might not puff up.
What you’ll need:
6 six-ounce glass or ceramic custard cups (or better yet, purpose made popover pans, which have cups deeper than wide)
Eggbeater
2 mixing bowls
Ingredients:
2 extra large eggs (or 1/4 cup of egg if using a different size). Don’t use egg substitute.
1 cup sifted flour, preferably unbleached
1 cup whole milk
1/4 level tsp. baking powder
Preparation:
Preaheat oven to 450 [sup]o[/sup]F, and check temperature with an oven thermometer. Use a canola or corn oil cooking spray, and apply a thin, even coat to the inside of the custard cups. Just before you’re ready to pour the batter, place the cups on a cookie sheet and preheat in the oven for 5 minutes. Don’t overheat, or you’ll risk burning the oil.
Mixing:
In one mixing bowl, mix together the dry ingredients until thoroughly blended. In the second bowl, crack the two eggs and beat until a uniform light yellow color, then add the milk and mix together until well-blended. Microwave the egg-milk mixture until it is around room temperature or a bit higher; about 30 seconds or so. Slowly stir the dry ingredients into the liquid while running your egg beater on low speed. Continue mixing for 1 minute on low. Don’t overmix. There will be small lumps in the batter–this is good.
Baking:
Remove the preheated cups from the oven and fill each evenly about half full. Return to the oven and bake at 450 [sup]o[/sup]F for 30 minutes. Don’t open the oven for the first 25 minutes, or the popovers might collapse. After 30 minutes, reduce the temperature to 350 [sup]o[/sup]F for 10 minutes.
If all has gone well, you’ll have nicely puffed popovers. Break apart and enjoy with butter and/or your favorite jam, preserves or whatever you feel like. Bon apetite.
Umm… QED…all due respect and everything, and maybe it’s a New England thing, but popovers are all about the BUTTER, my friend, meaning you don’t use oil or spray or any of that nonsense, you use a nice healthy dollop of butter in each cup, melted in the oven as you say. Pour the batter right into the butter pool and it will “spread” the butter up the sides as it fills, and leave a nice bit on top to flavor the popover as it cools
And the eggs will lift them as high as an elephant’s eye, ain’t no call for baking powder.
By the way, just as a matter of education for the masses, popovers and Yorkshire Pudding are fundamentally the same thing, the only difference is that instead of a pool of hot butter in a narrow cup, you pour the batter into a pan of hot beef fat.
I’ve tried it with the butter, and they just didn’t rise as high as they do with the spray–perhaps it’s the altitude where I am now. And the baking powder does help–but too much “poisons” them and they don’t rise right. Believe me, I went through several batches to get them “just so”. Not that I minded eating even the failures.
Darn it! I honestly thought the title was a clever play-on-words to say that Q.E.D. was coming to visit New England! Sigh. Back to your regularly scheduled cooking.
I resurrected this old thread that I remembered to let you know I’m off to the kitchen this moment, Q.E.D., and will follow your instructions to the letter. I just bought a real popover pan with my Sur La Table Christmas gift card!
On the breakfast menu this morning:
Popovers
Soft scrambled eggs
Crisp bacon
Guava juice
I’ll post back with a report of my failure/success with the popovers.
Kudos to you for the recipe, Q.E.D., because the popovers turned out perfectly: each ballooned out improbably to a crisp, hollow shell. Additionally, it occurred to me as I was mixing the batter that it was essentially identical to crepe batter – so I tried pulling apart one of the crisp popovers and put inside a shmear of Nutella and a couple of slices of banana. Heavenly!
I do note that 2 extra large eggs, when beaten, come out to more like 1/3 or even 1/2 cup, and I also added a pinch of salt to the recipe for flavor. Otherwise, I followed it exactly. Thanks again for posting it.
Heretic! Blasphemer! Charlatan! Baking powder in a popover?!?!? As stoid has already, quite rightly pointed out. All you have to remember is one, one, two, and a half. One cup flour, one cup milk, 2 large eggs and a half-teaspoonful of salt. Buzz in a blender for 30 seconds, refrigerate for 30 minutes. Slightly sweetened fruit[strawberries or peaches] makes a great filling. Creamed mushrooms are good too.
Sorry, LilyoftheValley, every last one was et - some with jam, some with Nutella, and some filled with scrambled eggs and a shot of Tabasco sauce. I was trying to fill up on a big breakfast because I needed to be able to sit through another 3.5 hour viewing of ROTK without resorting to popcorn!
