I baked popovers to go with leftover soup. I used my favorite popover recipe which is in a cookbook entitled The Cookie and Biscuit Bible. I must be catching up on my Bible reading as I recently checked out some other food and cooking “Bible” books from my local library. Anyway this popover recipe is simple and has always turned out well. It is my favorite but it is also the only popover recipe I have ever used.

• 2 Tab. butter, melted
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1 1/2 cups four
• pinch of salt
• a few sprigs of fresh herbs

I confess that I did not have milk in the house, nor fresh herbs. Well, there is a thriving bunch of parsley but I wasn’t keen on using that in popovers. So how do you make popovers without milk? I used 3/4 cup half-and-half with 1/4 cup water. For the herbs I decided to use 1/2 tsp dried fine herbs and 1/2 tsp dried tarragon.

Heat oven to 425 degrees F and spray/grease a twelve cup muffin pan.

Beat the eggs in a stand mixer until blended and then beat in the milk, then the melted butter. Sift the flour and salt and gradually beat this into the egg mixture. Stir in the herbs. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 25-30 minutes. Do not open the oven until done. These should have popped over the tops of the muffin cups and then slowly deflate when removed from the pan.

So what happened? Not sure but the heavier milk may have been an issue. I also may have beaten it too long and hard. I had read somewhere that the batter should be beaten for three minutes to be sure there is plenty air incorporated. Well, I started the beating with the eggs and kept the mixer going to the very end. This may have been 6-8 minutes since I did not have mise en place and everything ready to add in the proper order.

But all was not lost. These came out like an egg-y muffin and sopped up the soup broth just fine. Now what to do with the four that we didn’t eat?