The Secret to Perfect Popovers

There were SO many great suggestions for my year of no-buying-new-clothes post.  I don't know how I'm going to pick!  Drawing out of a hat is becoming more and more alluring. ;)  Meanwhile, I had some requests for my popovers I posted on instagram.  They're pretty much a regular breakfast around here, because they're a nice vehicle for any sort of saucy goodness you want to put in them.

A while back, something got one of our chickens.  Grrr.  We have played detective...or, I just asked my friend who also has chickens.  She said since there weren't any feathers, or remains, it was probably a fox.  And we've seen a fox around here before, so now they're enclosed with some heavy duty netting during the day, and in their fancy coop at night.  Maybe the chickens should get their own post, silly girls.  All I was really getting at was that we still have plenty of eggs with one less hen.  We did have a funny tiny egg, the size of a quail egg, for a couple of days.  I guess one of them was taking some time off.  

Back to the popovers.  I have tried many pans, both popover and muffin, I even tried to use ramekins, and I always come back to Nordic Ware pans.  If you want one piece of advice about making popovers, it's this:  It will deflate all the joy out of making them if you have to scrape, rip and pry them out of the pan.  Seriously.  Then you're left with a pan that has to soak for 258 days so you don't want to make them ever again.  Invest in a good pan.  Period.  I got my

popover pans (I normally bake two at a time) from Amazon, which seemed to be the best price, but as I was looking, I also noticed that they have a mini popover pan!  How cute would that be! Bite size popovers! I might have to put that on my list for Santa this year.

I have fiddled around with different recipes and ways of greasing the pans, and my favorite recipe is Julia Child's:

• 3 eggs, room temperature
• 1 cup milk, room temperature
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp salt (I add a couple more pinches)
• 2 tablespoons melted butter (I use coconut oil sometimes), plus more for pans

Preheat oven to 425ºF.  Grease popover pan(s) with butter, coconut oil, or shortening with lots of generosity. ;) Place all ingredients in a blender and pulse until smooth.  Evenly distribute the batter between 6 cups, it should fill them slightly more than halfway.  Bake for 20-25 minutes without opening the oven.  If you want a less doughy center, you can then reduce the temperature to 350º and bake for another 10 minutes, but I like a crispy outer with the soft center.

Notes: if you don't want to wait for your milk and eggs to be room temperature, pop the milk in the microwave for a few seconds and put your eggs in a bowl of warm water.  Voilá!

What next?  Pearl will usually make honey butter.  I like my homemade peach jam that never sets up and is more of a sauce than jam.  Maybe I subconsciously purposely sabotage my jam so I can have sauce for these breakfast instances.  We will go with that.  I also like our homemade orange sauce, which I though I had posted on here in the past, but I couldn't find it, so I'll have to share soon, too. One night I brought home a rotisserie chicken and made these, and Ryan put chicken in his!  It's better than chicken and waffles because it's a built-in pocket!  It's a favorite around here, as you can see. One day I'd like to open up a popover restaurant and have a different butter or sauce for each season or month.  One day.