Sparkle Kitchen: Popovers!
Popovers — Sylvia’s Favorite!
In the At Home with Martin & Sylvia story "A Hunting Morning", Mrs. Brown makes them especially because she knows Sylvia loves them. And it’s true — covered in butter, there’s little better!
Popovers are totally new to the Sparkle Kitchen. We’ve marveled when other friends made them for us, but never actually tried making them ourselves. So a few weeks ago, we gave it a go. And, as is the norm for our kitchen, we whipped up the gluten-free variety. And they were really good. But they didn’t... well... pop!
So this past weekend we tried again. We mixed up both the gluten-full and the gluten-free varieties. Just to see how they would turn out. And here are our results (plus recipes).
For the traditional wheat-flour recipe, we adapted a recipe from Joy of Cooking.
Popovers
Ingredients:
- 1 cup flour, sifted
- 1 cup milk (of your choice. We used rice milk.)
- 1 tbl melted butter
- ¼ tsp salt
- 2 eggs
Directions:
All of these ingredients need to be at ROOM TEMPERATURE. Joy of Cooking says 70°.
(Don’t do what I did on the first batch, and say “Oh, golly there’s no time to get these silly eggs to room temperature. How important can that be?” It’s important.)
Preheat the oven to 450°. Butter the muffin or popover tin. (And butter it well!)
Mix the flour, salt, milk and melted butter until it’s combined. It will be like a thin pancake batter. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat in until just mixed. (Note: do not over-mix!)
Place the muffin tin in the oven for three minutes and allow to heat. Pour the batter into the muffin tin, filling each cup to only ¾ full.
Bake at 450° for 15 minutes. Without opening the door to peek to see if they are rising (no peeking!), lower the temperature to 350° and bake for another 20 minutes. (On our best batch out of four, we didn’t peek at all! Not even through the door with the light!)
Cool for a moment on the cooling rack. Remove popovers from tin, slit the tops with a knife to release steam, add a good pat of butter (or flax oil), and serve. Yum!
For the GLUTEN FREE variety, you’ll follow the same steps, but use these ingredients:
- 1 cup all purpose gluten-free baking mix*
- 1 cup milk (of your choice. We used rice milk.)
- 1 tbl melted butter
- ¼ plus ⅛ tsp salt
- 3 eggs
Note: For the GF Baking Mix, you’ll want a mix of rice, potato, tapioca etc. We used Bob’s Red Mill for this recipe.
But otherwise, follow the same instructions above. Our gluten-free popovers didn’t pop quite as well, but they were DELICIOUS.
Download the Gluten Free recipe HERE
(On that note, I want to mention: for the gluten-free version, I found various recommendations for mixing the batter with a blender, in order to help the popovers rise properly. We did not do this, but it may be just the thing to help them rise like their gluten-full cousins.)
So delicious, it’s all our younger son wanted for dinner. And I figured, why not? Between the eggs, rice flour and butter, he’s got enough calories, protein and fat. Add some green vegetables and:
He ate the third one with butter on top. And of course, the rest of us just had to join him.
If you liked this recipe, here are others you might enjoy:
Not yet a subscriber? Try a free trial HERE.
About the Author
Lisabeth Sewell
Lisabeth Sewell has worn many hats at Sparkle over the years, from Sparkle Kitchen Blogger to Editorial Director to Doer of All Odd Jobs. Her primary role is as CEO.
