popovers update

The lovely Pamela's people came through with a recipe!

Which I then proceeded to wreck.

See, the recipe looked remarkably simple, and it was followed by a bunch of tips. I was too eager to try the recipe to bother reading the tips. First Bad Idea. However, the recipe only makes six popovers, so I didn't waste much either in ingredients or time or effort, and they tasted right.

Pamela's recipe calls for the gluten-free bread/flour mix. As it happens, I only had the gluten-free baking/pancake mix. I thought I would try it anyway. Second Bad Idea. Had I read the tips the nice people at Pamela's had thoughtfully provided, I would have seen THE FIRST TIP IN BOLD PRINT, which says "Always use Pamela's Bread/Flour Mix to make the popovers. Pamela's Pancake/Baking Mix will not work." Oops.

The batter turned out right - just like mom's. There the similarity ended. No pretty, fluffy, popping popovers. More like doughy, muffiny things that were trying to pass for popovers. And they stuck to my non-stick pan. Like I said, they tasted fine. But popovers aren't just about taste, they are about presentation. It's part of the experience to marvel at how a puddle of batter can literally rise to heights unimagined.

Another thing I inherited from my mom was experimentation, which translated means "oh bother the instructions/guidelines, let's deviate a little and see what happens." Most of the time, this works for me (see previous post on how I often wander from the instructions for a knitting pattern). However, there are occasions, such as the above, when it really is better to read ALL the directions and follow them. For example, at Christmas, Mom and I attempted a gluten-free version of my grandmother's nut roll recipe, which turned out fine. Sort of. Except for it being a royal bitch to try to roll up and awfully crumbly when cut and eaten after baking. We used the baking/pancake mix for that as well. Hmm.

Maybe it would have worked better with the bread/flour mix.