Recipe: Lemon Popovers with Pecan Honey Butter

Since I was packing up to move, I was trying to use up random things in the kitchen so I didn't have to pack them up and take them with me. I knew I had flour, chopped walnuts (same as pecans, right?), and lots of butter, so when I found this popover recipe from Taste of Home, all I needed to buy was a lemon. And only three steps? Easy enough!

Ingredients

• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 cup 2% milk
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 5 tablespoons finely chopped toasted pecans, divided
• 3/4 teaspoon grated lemon zest
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 6 tablespoons butter, softened
• 6 tablespoons honey

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450°. In a large bowl, whisk eggs and milk until blended. Whisk in flour and salt until smooth (do not overbeat). Stir in 3 tablespoons pecans, lemon zest, and lemon juice.

2. Generously grease a 6-cup popover pan with nonstick spray; fill cups half full with batter. Bake 15 minutes. Reduce oven setting to 350° (do not open oven door). Bake until deep golden brown, 10-15 minutes longer (do not underbake).

3. Meanwhile, combine butter, honey and remaining 2 tablespoons pecans. Immediately remove popovers from pan to a wire rack. Pierce side of each popover with a sharp knife to let steam escape. Serve immediately with pecan honey butter.

I've never made popovers before, and I didn't have a popover pan, so I had to improvise using cupcake tins. I think that works okay, except that the dough does stick to the papers (even though I did spray the papers). Perhaps if you REALLY greased the cupcake tins and forwent the papers, that would have worked better. And I didn't have a wire rack for cooling, so I just used a random grill-like thing. Welp.

Since we were packing, I didn't have all the usual tools at my disposal. I didn't have a large bowl, and I used a fork instead of a whisk, so I don't think everything incorporated quite as nicely. I also didn't have a zester, so I just used a serrated knife to cut tiny pieces of lemon rind. Luckily I still had the juicer, and I only needed half the lemon (the other half could be used for cocktails!). 

How much butter do you need?!

Also, this makes A LOT of honey butter, much more than you need. You could easily halve the recipe and still have enough (you could also disregard this completely and eat them on their own or just use regular butter). 

I didn't poke the sides of the popovers (I missed that step), but I think they turned out okay. Sticking to the cupcake wrappers is certainly not ideal. But the flavor was yummy. I couldn't taste much of the lemon, but maybe that's because all I could taste was the butter! Maybe a lemon-flavored butter could be better? (Say that three times fast!) I'm not sure I would make these again (I don't see myself investing in a popover pan anytime soon), but it was worth a try. 

PS: In the end we threw away most of the butter, and my husband let some of the pop-overs go moldy before we could eat them. Too bad!