A good popover should be slightly crisp on the outside, tender and slightly custardy on the inside, and must be attractively puffy. There are specialty pans available for making them, but as with most specialty pans, it's hard to know whether buying them is worth the price. I don't make popovers very often, so I almost always use a regular muffin pan, as I did when I made eggnog popovers over the holidays. But the argument for using the specialty pans, neatly summed up in the above photo of the Fanatic Cook 's mile-high popovers, is compelling. The muffin-made popovers met the textural characteristics that are desirable in a popover, but they simply cannot compete when it comes to the towering heights that the specialty pan popovers do.
With this in mind, I would certainly consider investing in a popover pan if I made popovers more than once or twice a year. The results, clearly, are impressive and the pans don't take up that much room. I'll just keep them with my wide array of specialty and shaped cake pans....
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-31-2007 @ 4:02PM
Foodie Bride said...
My popovers NEVER look like that :(
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1-31-2007 @ 4:34PM
Colin said...
I made your eggnog popovers over the holidays too. And they were awesome. As that was my first attempt at popovers, I also used a muffin pan. I only filled every other hole. Only because I didn't have enough batter... and they turned out great!
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1-31-2007 @ 5:34PM
Charlotte said...
I remember watching a cooking show where they said that if you were substituting a regular muffin pan for the special popover pan, to only fill every other "hole" in the pan. That would give the air the necessary room to circulate and the popovers room to grow. Has anyone else heard this? Does it work?
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1-31-2007 @ 6:09PM
lauralemay said...
I make popovers for snacks about once a month, and yes, I own a popover pan. It looks like the same one that's in that picture. The popovers are indeed noticably taller than with muffin tins, but they still taste the same.
My mom used to make popovers with plain old pyrex custard cups, and her popovers were huge, way taller than any popovers I've been able to make in any pan. To this day I have no clue how she did it and she's lost her recipe, darn it all to heck.
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