Sunday, January 31, 2016

Popovers Fontaine

I love popovers!  I haven't made them in quite some time, but I decided to throw them together tonight since our chickens have been keeping us very well-supplied with eggs.

I wish I could remember where I got this recipe.  When I worked for the bank, sometimes I would be sent to work in the Avoca office.  I enjoyed substituting there because they had a break room where I could eat my lunch, and in that break room, they always had a stack of cookbooks that I would sit and peruse while I waited for my lunch hour to be over.  Thus, I know that I copied this recipe out of one of their cookbooks, but I didn't write down which one.

Popovers are extremely easy and fun to bake, and if you are a homesteader or farmer with your own chickens and dairy cow, you can produce most of the ingredients that you need by yourself.  Here is what you will need:

Popovers Fontaine
 
3 Tblsp. melted butter
3 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt
 
First, build your fire so that you will have a hot oven.  You're shooting for about 400 degrees.  Then, put the butter in a dish in the warming oven or on top of the reservoir (or wherever) of the range to melt.
 
The butter melting in the warming oven.

Grease 8 five-ounce custard cups and place them on a baking pan with edges.  I know that some people bake popovers in muffin tins, but I've never had very good luck with that, and using custard cups has never failed me.  You MUST put the cups on a pan.  Most of the shortening that you use to grease the cups will come out and dribble down the sides of the cups onto the pan.  You don't want that mess on the bottom of your oven!
 
 
 
Beat the rest of the ingredients together with a whisk.  Add the melted butter last.  The batter may look a little lumpy.
 
Fill custard cups half full of the batter.  Place in the oven until they puff up and are golden brown.  The recipe originally stated that they needed to be baked from 45-50 minutes.  I find that amount of time to be way too long.
 
 
 
I love to watch popovers bake.  You never can predict how they are going to look when they come out of the oven.
 

I always eat these with a little homemade pancake syrup, but I think that they would be good dusted with a little powdered sugar, too.  Fruit makes a great accompaniment for popovers.
 
 
 
My favorite memory surrounding this recipe is from the day Nancy and I were married.  My aunt and uncle stayed overnight here with me on the night before we were married, and so I baked popovers in the Qualified Range for our breakfast.  Just as we were sitting down to eat, my brother and my sister both arrived separately, so I ended up serving an impromptu breakfast for five that morning.  If you have unexpected company, these are an easy but novel go-to food.  I hope you enjoy them! 
 


2 comments:

  1. Nice! I use the regular popover recipe from King Arthur's site and I love it. The only times its failed to pop were when I failed to follow the recipe exactly. I will say though, the best popovers are the ones that I make in the BIG muffin tin, the ones in the regular muffin tins are never quite right.

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  2. Lovely ...both the popovers and the stove.

    Ann

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