My preciousss popoversss

The renovation of Dylan's old room led to some Marie Kondo-style consideration of what to keep and what to trash. One of the desk drawers turned up this treasure:

Press the button on the base and see what happens. Go ahead, I'll wait:

This little Gollum has been sparking much joy in these circles since it was unearthed. Despite what a creepy toy it is, Carter even liked it when she came over recently to play with her Great Auntie K while Adam did the heavy lifting on the climbing wall part of the renovation. Talk about the anti-Barbie!

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Mom has been on a mission lately to serve up some popovers with a compote made from local fruit (strawberries, then peaches). Unfortunately, she and I both had failures from two separate recipes that produced popovers that didn't pop, which are just nasty little muffins.* That led me to do some research on popover recipes, all of which had nearly identical ingredients: 1 cup of whole milk, 1 cup of flour, 2 eggs, and a little melted butter and salt. The recipes differ, however, in the application of heat. The oven temperatures are usually in the 400- to 425-degree range, but some of them start at 450 degrees and then get dropped to 300 or 350 partway through the baking process. I finally decided that for our next effort we should go with the simplest method, which Mom altered ever so slightly, and it worked beautifully. So Mom has now laid claim to a new "speciality."

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*I'm pretty sure Mom doomed my effort by opening the oven door before the popovers were done (see my strict admonition in step 5 of the recipe below). I'm not saying Mom did it on purpose to make herself look better, but ...

Andi made the popovers in a muffin tin and reported back that they work “great.”

Popovers

Adapted from Alton Brown via Food Network (Good Eats S12, with video)

If you don’t have a popover pan, you can make this recipe using the 10 outer wells of a 12-well muffin tin; the popovers won't be as tall, but they’ll still taste good. Cook's Illustrated came out with a new recipe in the January/February 2021 issue (article with video), after I posted this recipe. Their revised method says you can avoid shrunken bases on the popovers by lightly greasing the pan with nonstick spray only (skip the butter nibs in step 1) and not preheating the pan (step 4), which has the added benefit of making the process safer and easier. But Mom is the one who always makes the popovers and she swears by the method used in this recipe, so we haven't tried the new way.

7 grams (½ tablespoon) unsalted butter, cut into 6 small pieces, for the pan (see note)
242 grams (1 cup) whole milk, at room temperature
135 grams (~1 cup) all-purpose flour
2 large eggs (~57 grams each in the shell), at room temperature
14 grams (1 tablespoon) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt

    1. Place a rack in the center of the oven; heat to 400 degrees.
    2. You need a 6-well, nonstick popover pan for this recipe (see note). Spray the pan lightly with nonstick cooking spray. Drop a small piece of butter into each of the wells (see note).
    3. Weigh and measure all of the remaining ingredients into a regular or bullet-style blender. Blend for 30 seconds until fully combined.
    4. Place the prepared popover pan in the oven for 2 minutes to preheat (see note). Carefully remove the pan from the oven (the butter nibs should be melted). Working quickly, divide the batter evenly among the pan’s wells. There should be a little over 80 grams of batter in each well, each of which should be about ⅓ to ½ full.
    5. Bake until the popovers are golden brown all over, about 30 to 35 minutes, by which time they should have puffed and risen well above the lips of the wells. Do NOT open the oven door while baking or the popovers will deflate and turn out as dense, eggy, entirely sad little muffins instead.
    6. Transfer the pan to a wire cooling rack, and immediately pierce the top of each popover with the tip of a sharp paring knife to release steam. Invert the pan onto the rack to remove the popovers. Cool for a few minutes, then serve warm with butter and/or jam or a fruit compote. You can also let the popovers cool completely and serve them filled with ice cream and sundae sauces for a special treat kinda like profiteroles. Makes 6 large popovers.