hot and crusty

r is leaving for australia for three months, so we had brunch on labor day.  assuming that most places would be closed, i made popovers.  i can't recall ever having made them successfully before, so this time i wanted to get them right.

of course, it turns out that it's really not that hard to get them right; i suppose i was on crack or something when i made them last.  these popovers were so attractive that i don't quite know what went wrong the first few times.  all you do is mix the ingredients together, pour the batter in the pan, and let the eggs do their thing in a rather hot oven.  i think the trick is to leave them in the oven long enough to get crispy and brown on the outside, as you can see is what happened here.  

popovers are good on their own - i mean, you can't really go wrong with eggs, butter, flour, and milk - but i made scrambled eggs to go with them for the savory, and whipped cream and cherry preserves for the sweet.  the scrambled eggs were good, but i think i prefer the cherry preserves; at any rate, i think that the wetness of the jam and whipped cream is a better complement for the crustiness of the popover than the scrambled eggs.  i think shredded rotisserie chicken would be good as a savory filling, but that might just be me and my current obsession with rotisserie chickens.  

oddly enough, i made the last batch of popovers after the batter had been sitting for several hours (possible health risk, i suppose, bacteria-wise, but given that the popovers bake for 15 minutes at 450F and longer at 350F, i figured we'd kill all the bad stuff off) and that was the best batch.  the popovers rose higher and had more consistently hollow interiors - a couple of the previous ones were a bit solid in the middle.  the best ones are the ones that turn over while they're cooking; i don't know why it happens, but they curl and climb the sides of the pan and produce mutant popovers that are impossibly tall.  (these popovers were already huge because i made them in a huge-muffin tin.)

so there you have it: popovers aren't that hard to make.  just be sure that you don't curdle the eggs with butter that's too hot.

popovers

adapted from the joy

1c flour

1/2t salt

2 eggs, room temp

1 1/4c whole milk, room temp

1T butter, melted and cooled to lukewarm

1. it's important that the ingredients are all at room temp for maximum volume, so don't skip that step.  grease your muffin tin - i just melted some butter and brushed it on with a pastry brush.  preheat the oven to 450F.

2. combine the flour and salt in a bowl.  in another bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk, then drizzle in the butter slowly, while continuing to whisk.  this is to avoid curdling the eggs with the butter, which is hotter than the egg-milk mixture.

3. add the wet ingredients to the dry and fold together.  don't overmix - a little lumpiness is fine.

4. fill each cup in the tin 2/3 to 3/4 full; if any cups are empty, fill them a third full with water.  bake in the middle of the oven at 450F for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350F and continue baking until the popovers are nicely browned, about 20-25 minutes.  don't open the oven until the last five minutes or so, lest your popovers deflate.

5. take the popovers out of the cups and puncture the sides with a sharp knife, to let the steam escape.  you can recrisp these in the oven if you've let them sit for a while, but you should really eat them as soon as they're out of the oven.

[makes 6 large popovers or 12 cupcake/muffin-size popovers]