Popovers

I’ve had an obsession with popovers for almost a week now. I’ve made them 4 times over the last 6 days. I started with cheese popovers to go with dinner. Then I tried jam popovers for breakfast (twice) and last night I tried an adaptation of yorkshire pudding as a casserole top (not the best idea, but it was at least edible)

My favorite of the three are most definitely the jam popovers, so I thought I’d share. I started with the joy of cooking recipe, but I changed the amounts, the order of preparation, and the baking. So if you’re a popover expert and something I’m doing looks WEIRD – now you know why.

Ingredients
1 1/4C milk
2 eggs
1T butter
1/2t salt
2T sugar
1C flour
1/4C jam, give or take

Start preheating the oven to 450F.
Warm the milk up to room temperature, or a little above (maybe 90F?) I did everything in my big 4C glass liquid measure. That made pouring easy and cut back on dishes.
Add the two eggs and whisk. Whisk really well, so the egg is completely broken up and mixed in.
Melt the butter, add that, whisk some more. I paused to grease my muffin tins (12 wells total) at this point with the dregs of the butter.
Whisk in the sugar and salt.
Sift in the flour, and then whisk until everything is just barely mixed. Maybe sifting isn’t necessary, but the batter will be a little lumpy anyway and I thought sifting might help.

Pour the first half of the batter into the muffin trays. I filled each well about 1/4″.
Spoon a dollop of jam into the center of each well.

Pour the rest of the batter over the jam dividing it up as evenly as you can.
Put them in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. This was my biggest change, or at least it seemed like it to me. They rise and get really hollow in the center at this temperature. And the jam has just barely started to caramelize in the bottom of the tray. Joy of cooking says to bake at 450F for 15 minutes and then 350F for 20 minutes. I didn’t think that made them puffy enough for my liking.

The first try I left in the oven for 30 minutes by accident. They were burnt, not caramelized, on the bottom and still really delicious. Also I thought the little jam vents that formed on the top were cute.

The second try I got out of the oven before they burned. And they collapsed a little. But they were still delicious and there was no charcoal on the bottoms.