too pooped to post

Well, almost. I wasn’t too pooped to pop though, and after seeing all the triumphant puffy popovers posted by the other punctual Tuesdays with Dorie members, here I am with my tardy popovers and a quick (for me) recap.

Little did I know when I bought these mini-cake pans years ago, that I had in fact purchased popover pans. Their straight sides looked perfect for turning out little chocolate cakes, which they did admirably then. They look and feel like cast iron covered with a durable non-stick, so they distribute heat evenly and with a thin coating of butter, nary a crumb of popover stickiness. I have no idea who made them or where I bought them.

One of the best things about popovers is that you almost always have all the ingredients you need – milk, eggs, butter, flour, salt – and they are very easily mixed together by hand or machine, just dump and mix! I recommend, however, that you never plug in the blender when you’ve already loaded the pitcher onto the base, but haven’t placed the lid on yet. Yeah, did that, but skipped taking a picture of the result. 😦

Like many of the TWD’ers I made this recipe more than once since it’s quick (unless you forget the blender lid) and the ingredients are readily available. It’s so intriguing and almost magical when you get these big puffy baked things from a 1/3 cup of rather thin batter and it’s pretty fun to watch them bake too. I altitude adjusted the first batch on the left by adding 1 1/2 cups each of milk and flour instead of the original 1 cup; these definitely rose taller and kept their shape better. The extra flour develops more gluten for structure, while the extra milk keeps the ingredients in balance and prevents dryness. While they looked amazing, they were a little doughy inside and a bit on the chewy side for me. So I went back to the original unadjusted recipe for Round 2. I bumped up the salt to 1 teaspoon of coarse kosher, and even added 1 tablespoon of sugar as Round 1 was also a little flat in taste while not in height. Round 2 did not have the impressive height of the altitude-adjusted batch, but I liked the more tender crumb, thinner crust and completely hollow interiors which were the perfect vessels for some homemade preserves.

And while we could have easily consumed both batches with my son visiting, I sent some of AA (altitude-adjusted) Round 1 to our next door neighbors along with apricot butter. The three of us enjoyed the rest alongside a summer frittata and cottage bacon Sunday brunch.