Popovers (Or a Lesson in Making the Best of a Situation)
Sometimes when life hands you un-popped Popovers, you call them Yorkshire Puddings and keep going.
In 2025 I want to document more of what I make and get into the swing of making or baking something at least weekly.
Given I work an office job that loves getting baked goods, this shouldn’t be too hard but having three kids and a puppy make sharing and showcasing things a little more challenging, but it’d be fun to look back at all of the things I’ve made and done next year so it’s happening.
To kick off the year of bakes at the office, I decided to go with a childhood favorite - popovers.
It’s something my mother would make for us on the weekends that I absolutely loved. When we moved from the Midwest to New England when I was in high school, we ended up spending a lot of time in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and right in the center of their downtown area there was a bakery called Popovers in the Square that specialized in them and I’ve been chasing that dragon ever since.
This recipe yields 24 and I can’t get it as popover-y as my mother or Popovers could, but I’m on my way. I used bacon fat here because it’s delicious and I had it but you can use butter in its place just as easy.
When making this batch I had a smoking oven, a small baby crying, a near two year old yelling for a snack, and a puppy running around so the oven ended up staying open way longer than I was hoping, probably impacting the final rise but they taste amazing and are very easy to make.
Even if you don’t get the signature popover rise, you can always just say you were intending to go for individual servings of Yorkshire pudding instead and no one will notice. Maybe that’s the metaphor for how to handle unexpected mishaps in 2025. When life hands you deflated popovers, call them Yorkshire puddings and make the best of it.
Popovers (or single serve Yorkshire Puddings if they don’t pop over)
Yield - 24 popovers
Ingredients:
1/2 Cup of Bacon Fat (butter works well in its place)
5 eggs
2 1/2 cups of milk
2 tablespoons of sugar
2 tablespoons of salt
2 1/2 cups of AP flour
Method:
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Then, in two muffin pans, spoon little dollops of bacon fat into each cup and put in the oven to heat up when making the batter.
In a large bowl, mix your eggs/milk/sugar/salt well. Then in 1/4 cup or 1/2 cup batches add the flour and mix until fully incorporated so there are no lumps.
When mixed, put the batter into a vessel you can pour with to make adding the batter to the hot cups easier. Open the oven, take out the cups, close the oven, quickly fill each cup halfway, then add it back into the oven. Bake for 15-20 minutes then turn the oven down to 350 to bake for another 15 minutes. Under no circumstances open your oven before it gets to 30 minutes.
Remove from pans, enjoy warm with butter, keep for up to two days to reheat.