Popovers from Any one can Bake, 1929

Apparently the Canadian weather decided to take a vacation here in Texas!  We had around 8" of snow, followed by several inches of sleet/freezing rain and several days of below freezing, all the way down to -1F one morning.  I know that a lot of the world deals with this every winter, but in this part of Texas we don't.  Normally we get maybe one snow per year.  We shut everything down, ooh and ahhh for a day, then it melts by late afternoon.  This snow/ice combo overstayed its welcome!

Brrrrr!

We were fortunate that we didn't lose electricity or water, like so many people did.  And we were very happy that one of the extras we decided on when we built this house was a wood-burning stove.  The cats were also pretty happy about that choice during all this!

Gil and his adorable toe beans!

Another thing we were happy about is that our Chambers stove uses propane.  We had just had the tank filled, so we were able to cook without worrying about using too much electricity.  And as cold as it was, I was looking for any excuse to turn on the oven.  

One one of the coldest evenings, I was making some soup and looking for something to go with it.  I pried this gem, Any one can Bake by the Royal Baking Powder Co. (1929) out of the overstuffed bookshelf and spotted the recipe for popovers, which start with the oven at 450F.  Yes, sign me up!

I don't remember how I acquired this book, but I do remember thinking that for an older book, the quality seems to be really high - glossy paper for the pages, a lot of (charming) color illustrations.  The outside of my particular copy has taken a beating, but the pages are pristine.  

Popovers!

The Green Corn Gems sound interesting

I'll be trying that Cocoa Bread one of these days

I had exactly 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour left, so I opted for the whole wheat version mentioned below the recipe.  I don't think I have ever had popovers before, so I don't have a basis for comparison, but I liked these.  I am guessing that the whole wheat flour made them a little more dense than usual, but Farm Boy and I liked them.  

The recipe says it makes six popovers, but it filled nine of the eleven cups (11?  why 11??) of my cast iron muffin pan.  I wasn't sure how full I could fill them without the batter running over, but I think I could have gone a little higher.  

So warm!

This is the first recipe I have tried from this book.  Since we were pleased with the results and there are quite a few other recipes that look promising, it will be bringing it out again.