Pantry Challenge: Cheesy Popovers

Over Presidents Weekend this past February, I decided to have a Pantry Challenge. Simply put in this challenge you can only use ingredients that are already in your kitchen. Preplanning meals and popping out to the corner store to pick up a missing ingredient are not allowed.

Overall we did pretty well. We had a dinner of Chicken Chili Soup with Popovers, Cinnamon Rolls with Maple Glaze, and Heart-Shaped Biscuits. Here's the last of the recipes from that challenge - the cheesy popovers. I started with a Breakfast Popovers recipe and adapted replacing skim milk with Soy Milk and adding the Pecorino Romano Grated Cheese to give the popovers a more savory flavor. If you're new to baking popovers, check out The Perfect Popover by Lynn Bonnett, she gives Tips and Tricks and explains how they work (steam).

Ingredients (makes 6 large popovers or 10 mini popovers)

• 1 cup All-Purpose Flour
• 1/4 teaspoon Salt
• (Optional) 2 Tablespoons Pecorino Romano Cheese, grated
• 2 teaspoons Canola Oil
• 2 Eggs
• 1 cup Unsweetened Soy Milk

Tip: Before I preheat the oven, I have all my ingredients assembled and ready to go. Soy milk and eggs are room temperature.

Instructions

1. Position a rack near the bottom of your oven and preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Grease popover pan with Earth Balance and preheat.
3. In a medium mixing bowl, combine Flour, Salt, and Pecorino Romano Cheese.
4. In another bowl, lightly beat Canola Oil, Eggs, and Soy Milk.
5. Add a spoonful of the flour and cheese mixture to the soy milk mixture and mix.
6. Slowly add the moistened flour and cheese mixture to the rest of the soy milk mixture and mix until smooth.
7. Remove popover pan from oven and fill cups half-full.
8. Bake for 40 minutes. Serve hot with a dab of Earth Balance.

NOTE: This recipe doesn't really work without a popover pan (yes in desperation I've tried it before). The individual wells are what gives the popover the crusty shell. I have two Chicago Metallic Non Stick 6-Cup Popover Pans. I don't recommend spraying the cups with Pam or something similar as it's a pain to clean off. Lightly coating the cups with Earth Balance works just as well and doesn't leave a sticky residue.