Bacon Cheddar Popovers

Soup for dinner? Sounds kind of boring, right? Not when you've got these lovelies accompanying your meal!  I just love when something is so easy to make and tastes sooo good!

I've got my mother-in-law to thank as inspiration for these - we were visiting one weekend and she had us sample some mini blue cheese popovers she had made. I bit into one and was instantly wondering why I didn't make these wonderfully eggy rolls more often.

Thinking about what I had on hand in the fridge, I realized I had bacon crumbles (sold in the pizza section in Shaws and my favorite cheat for adding bacon to a recipe) and shredded cheddar cheese - two flavors that always work well with together.

As a confession, my popovers weren't so much light and airy like traditional rolls - instead, they were dense and in your face with lots of salty, bacon-y goodness. I was fine with this texture "failure"! Just look at how moist and eggy it looks.

When I bit into one, I instantly thought it tasted like a bacon, egg and cheese breakfast sandwich in muffin form (one of my favorite things in the world) and that these would work well on their own in a brunch menu.

Bacon Cheddar Popovers (from Lobolita)

Ingredients

4 Tbsp Diced Raw Bacon (or around 3 oz of cooked bacon crumbles from Shaws)

4 whole eggs

2 cups milk

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup grated sharp cheese (I think I ended up using around 1 cup total)

I added 1/2 teaspoon pepper and a couple of shakes of cayenne pepper as well

Directions

1. Place one oven rack about 5 inches about the bottom element. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Grease a 12-cup metal muffin tin.
2. Distribute diced bacon among 12 muffin cups and put tin in oven while it preheats so that the bacon browns and sizzles.
3. Break eggs into a medium mixing bowl and beat them lightly with a fork. Add milk, salt, and flour (and pepper and cayenne pepper). I also threw in a handful of cheese for good measure! Mix lightly, making a lumpy batter.
4. When the oven is preheated and the bacon is brown and sizzling, carefully take pan out of the oven and pour batter into muffin cups, filling each one about 3/4 full. Sprinkle grated cheddar cheese on top of each muffin cup. Return pan to oven.
5. Bake at 450F for 20 minutes. Adjust temperature to 350F and bake an additional 10 - 15 minutes. Popovers are ready when they are puffed and browned and the centers are firm.
6. Take muffin tin out of oven and run a thin-bladed knife around the edge of each popover to release. Serve hot.  (Note: Grease your pan REALLY well - I thought I did, but my popovers ended up sticking to my muffin tin, perhaps since it was older and didn't have much of a non-stick surface?)

 I had enough batter to make 12 regular sized popovers and 10 mini popovers (made in a mini muffin tin) just for fun:

The best thing is that the popovers reheat wonderfully in the oven and taste just as good the second day (and believe me when I say we only had popovers leftover since I forbid Andrew from eating the whole batch on the first night!)