Manageability – Fairly easy, but cream cheese disaster.
Some things in life are not super appealing to look at, but are actually quite warm and wonderful on the inside. Like burnt marshmallows on a s’more, homemade chili, or Golden Globe winner Steve Buscemi. You can go right ahead and add to that list Half Baked Harvest’s Cinnamon Sugar Brown Butter Popovers. Because while her popovers look very symmetrical and pretty, mine were a globular mess of heaping lopsidedness. But hey, they still tasted great!
Actually, I have a suspicion about her popovers and why they look so much better than mine: she did not use cream cheese. This recipe lists cream cheese as an option, and I opted to use it because – hey, I’m a fan. I’m glad I did too, because they gave a savory sweetness and some cheesy texture to the end product. But when I cooked my PO’s with the CC, the cheese busted out of the top as soon as these pastries “popped over”. I had cream cheese burning in the bottom of my oven for a solid 10 minutes, and I almost burned the whole damn building down. Good thing I live on the top floor, because there was smoke billowing out of my windows.
So keep an eye on your cream cheese, if you choose to use it. Don’t let it sit at the top, stuff it way down deep like all your insecurities, and once it’s done you’ll have a really delicious, sweet, cinnamon-y finger food. This was my favorite snack of the entire tea party. A Golden Globe winner.
Ingredients
- 6 teaspoons + 6 tablespoons salted butter. I don’t know what math that comes out to.
- 1 1/2 cups whole milk, at room temperature
- 3 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 tablespoon salted butter, melted
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- Optional: 4 ounces cream cheese, cut into 6 to 12 cubes. Or spheres, I guess. Or pyramids.
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
Instructions
- Position a rack in the lower third of the oven. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
- Place 1 teaspoon of butter in each cup of a 6 cup standard popover pan. Alternately, you can use a 12-cup muffin pan and make 12 mini popovers. Just make a decision! Transfer the pan to the oven 3-5 minutes before baking to melt the butter and heat the pan.
- In a medium bowl, vigorously whisk together the milk and eggs until frothy, about 1 minute. Add 1 tablespoon melted butter, the vanilla, flour, and salt. Whisk to combine. It’s OK if there are small lumps. Life will go on.
- Carefully remove the popover pan from the oven and swirl the butter around the cups to grease the pan. Evenly divide the batter between the popover cups, filling them 3/4 of the way full. If using cream cheese, push 1 cube (or three-dimensional rhombus) of cream cheese into the center of each popover. Transfer to the oven and bake for 20 minutes.
- Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Bake another 15-18 minutes, until puffed, golden and crisp. If using a muffin pan, only bake 15-18 minutes total at 450. You know, cause they’re smaller.
- To make the brown butter. Add the remaining 6 tablespoons butter to a skillet set over medium heat. Allow the butter to brown until it smells toasted and is a deep golden color, about 3-4 minutes. Remove from the heat and transfer the butter to a heat-proof bowl. Combine the sugar and cinnamon in a shallow bowl.
- Brush each warm popover with browned butter, then roll (generously) through the cinnamon sugar. Enjoy warm.