Bacon & Goat Cheese Mini Popovers

When I was 25, I worked in corporate America at one of the leading fast food chains in the world. It was a grueling world, where my optimism, can-do attitude, lack of a MBA and youth were always working against me.

The Senior Vice President – who was a perfectly nice man – would always call me, “Young lady” highlighting for me my inexperience, lack knowledge and fact that the wrinkles hadn’t started showing through yet. He didn’t mean anything by it. He called everyone under 40 that.

And while this experience was long before the days where bullying bosses were reprimanded for their poor treatment – or even cruelty toward – subordinates, I learned a lot there. It was a defining few years of my life where I grew thicker skin, learned to strategize and met Kevin.

Food that’s an escape

Still, in an environment like that you often need an escape. The other “young ladies” and I would often flee for lunch and when we did the food and conversation flowed in a way that created bonds. It was over one of these lunches that I ate popovers for the first time at a café in Neiman Marcus.

These soft, billowy, little roll-like bites of goodness melted in my mouth. If bread perfection existed, surely popovers deserved that title.

From that day on, popovers stuck in my head and my heart and I knew I wanted to master making them at home…someday. Afterall, I was just 25 and there was time to learn how to master anything and everything.

Now let’s fast forward.

Here & now

Over a decade later, here I am. I felt like it was time to get around to mastering popovers. I believe I accomplished that with these Bacon & Goat Cheese Popovers.

If you’ve never had a popover before, it’s essentially made of eggs, milk and flour. It’s whipped together and cooks on the inside via steam, which causes the bread to popover the vessel it’s cooking in. You can see how I do it in the video below.

Variations galore

You can make popovers plain and simple, you can flavor them to be savory or you can even make them sweet. No matter how you make them, they’re going to be delicious.

For this recipe, I veered to the savory side of things by adding bacon and goat cheese to mine. And then I decided to top off all that savory-ness with some sweet by making a Whipped Cranberry Butter too.

These popovers turned out beautifully and Whipped Cranberry Butter was a perfect complement to the salty bacon and smooth goat cheese. The other “young ladies”, who are also now middle aged, would be proud.

A few tips for making these:

• You really need your milk and eggs at room temperature. It makes the popovers pop when the heat of the oven and the steam begins to cook the dough.
• When you turn the oven temperature down halfway through the cook time (all explained in the recipe) DO NOT open the oven. In fact, resist the urge to open the oven at all during the cooking process. You will deflate the popovers.
• These are going to start deflating the second you take them out of the oven. If you take a really, really, really sharp knife and stick them, it will release some of the steam and ideally allow them to hold shape. None of my knives were sharp for that magic.
• These are mini popovers so please note the cook time is probably different than other popover recipes you’ve seen.
• Crack them open and eat them with the butter!

You can find the full recipe for the Bacon & Goat Cheese Popovers below and the recipe for the Whipped Cranberry Butter here. You can also find all of the farmhouse recipes here. And if you need a popover pan, this is the mini one I used.

Thank you for visiting today! I hope you enjoyed this peak into my past and I hope you love the recipe! Please let me know how it goes if you decide to make them.

Bacon & Goat Cheese Popovers

These Bacon & Goat Cheese Popovers are delicious, savory and the perfect little, fluffy bites to pair with any meal. 

5 from 3 votes

Print Pin Rate

Course: Appetizer, Side Dish

Cuisine: American

Keyword: appetizer, popovers, popovers recipe, side dish recipe

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 34 minutes

Servings: 12

Author: Rachel

Ingredients

• 6 large eggs
• 3 cups flour
• 3 cups whole milk
• 2 Tbsp. salted butter, melted
• 2 tsp. kosher salt
• 12 tsp. butter, salted This is a teaspoon per popover cup. If you're not using th emini popover pan, you might need about a teaspoon and a half per whatever cup you're using.
• 12 half teaspoons of goat cheese
• 6 strips of bacon, crumbled

Instructions

• Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. 
• Add your 12 tsp. of butter to your popover pan and set aside. 
• Mix eggs and milk together until the mixture becomes frothy 
• Add in your 2 Tbsp. of melted butter and Kosher salt to the mixture. Mix again. 
• Slowly begin to add in your flour a little at a time. You can see how I do it in the video. 
• Once everything is blended set aside and add the popover pan with the butter to the oven. 
• Heat the pan with the butter for about 30 second to one minute. You want the teaspoons of butter to melt in the pan but you don't want to overcook it or worse, burn it. 
• Remove the pan from the oven and use a spoon or measuring cup to pour your batter into the cups. Fill them only about half way.
• Add in your crumbled bacon and goat cheese to each mini cup. 
• Add a little more batter to each cup to try to cover the cheese and the bacon. 
• Immediately stick the pan in the oven at 450 degrees and cook for 12-15 minutes. Keep an eye on them but DO NOT open the oven. 
• Without opening the oven, turn the heat down to 350 degrees and cook for another 12-15 minutes. If they look golden at 12 minutes take them out. 
• When the time is up, remove the pan from the oven and if you have a very sharp knife you can slit each popover to try and help them retain their shape. 
• Serve warm with the Whipped Cranberry Butter.