Mmmmm....Popovers

Popovers are one of my husband's favorite foods. He likes them so much that he bought his mother a professional-grade popover pan for a gift years ago. She no longer uses that pan these days, so she gave it to me. That was earlier this year, and I am now hooked on popovers, too.

I've tried a couple of different recipes, one from a King Arthur Flour cookbook, and one from Better Homes & Gardens. The BH&G version is by far the best. It's both easy and fairly fool-proof. I say "fairly," because I was a bit foolish when I made them today. I foolishly thought that I could use up some heavy cream that I had on hand as a substitute for half the milk in this recipe. Since we always use skim milk here and the original recipe calls for "milk," I thought that using half skim milk and half heavy cream might make a suitable substitute, perhaps giving me a consistency close to whole milk, and maybe even producing a more tender, rich popover...I was wrong, and my popovers today flopped.

Instead of being light, crisp, and tender, they had a crust like hard rolls, and it didn't even taste as good as they did with the skim milk version. Needless to say, this is going to be something that we're going to do again next weekend, because today's popovers didn't do justice to the recipe.

That said, I'm going to type the original recipe below, with just a couple of small modifications, which I have used successfully several times now. The original recipe called for vegetable oil, but I have found that the equal amount of melted butter works really well. The consistency is the same as with the oil, but the flavor is much richer. Also, since I have found that my attempt at substituting something other than skim milk was a failure, I'm adding that level of specificity to my recipe. I'm only going to use skim milk with this popover recipe from now on.

Oh, and one more point bears mentioning here...I've never made this recipe without a professional-grade popover pan. What I mean by professional grade is that this is a very heavy pan that heats very evenly so the popovers all "pop" at the same time and don't burn before they're completely done in the inside. If you don't have a restaurant supply store in your area, you could order a professional grade pan from a website like King Arthur Flour. It might seem a bit much to buy a pan just for popovers, but you can also use these pans for muffins and cupcakes.

Ingredients:
Shortening (to grease your popover cups)
4 large eggs
2 cups milk
2 Tbsp. butter, melted
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt

Grease your popover cups well. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a blender, combine remaining ingredients until smooth, and pour into 12 popover cups, filling them each half full. Bake popovers for 40 minutes or until very firm. Immediately after removing them from the oven, poke each popover with a fork to let the steam escape. Serve immediately with butter, jam or jelly, honey, or just enjoy them plain. They're crisp on the outside and very tender on the inside. (Makes 12 popovers.)