I got a batch of rye sourdough starter for Christmas last year, and after a year of making a loaf nearly every week with it… I admit it: it’s becoming a chore. And the same bread every morning for breakfast, no matter how delicious, becomes repetitive. So I’m very glad to have found that bread isn’t the only thing you can make with sourdough starter!

It started with pancakes, and calzone, then I found muffins… and this led me to find the monthly challenge Sourdough Surprises. Every month the site names a type of food to make with your sourdough starter, and then everyone blogs about their results on the same day.  Just what I need: a fun reason to refresh my sourdough at least once month!

The December challenge is popovers… which we don’t really do in the UK, unless you count Yorkshire puddings… However I did find an apple popover recipe in a book I have called Mastering the Art of Baking (p190). It’s just apple and cinnamon in the base of the popover, and then you turn them upside down to serve. Sounds simple enough, and rather tasty!

A quick check with my Flavour Bible gives me some ideas for additions, and as I’ve just bought some dark rum for another recipe I’m going with apple, cinnamon, raisins & rum; hopefully this will be a bit Christmassy! For the recipe I’m going to follow the one suggested on the Sourdough Surprises site, which thankfully comes in grams as well as volume measurements :)

I’m using a friand tray for my popovers. I don’t have a popover tray, and while I do have a muffin tray I want to use my new friand tray that I haven’t used yet! It goes in the oven (220c fan) to get pre-heated.

For the filling:

• 3 apples
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 2 tbsp dark rum

Soak the raisins in the rum. Peel and core the apples and cut into small cubes. Put in a pan on a low heat with the sugar and cinnamon. Once they start to soften add in the raisins and rum and continue cooking until the apples are nice and soft.

While that’s cooking the popover batter gets made:

• 230g skimmed (skim) milk
• 3 eggs
• 130g rye sourdough starter (refreshed)
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 120g plain (AP) flour

I whisked the eggs up, then added the milk and starter, before mixing in the flour and salt. The resulting mixture was a bit lumpy, but I didn’t want to over-mix it so just left it for 10 minutes before using it.

There’s enough apple mix for all the friand holes, but only enough for 9 with the batter. Which is fair enough as it was only meant to make 6 popovers without the apple mix.

Then it’s 15 minutes at 220c fan (at least I think it was 220c… checking back later I see that the book says 220c, so for fan I should have (/ might have and then forgotten / typo) put it at 200c), then another 15 minutes at 160c fan (definitely 160c).

Not as popovery as I might have liked, probably due to the wet fruit mix at the bottom.

Anyway I was glad to find they came out really easily: just put a desert spoon in and they came out whole! Given the upside-down serving suggested by the Mastering the Art of Baking book I was expecting a layer of fruit at the bottom separate to the popover.

So I served top-side-up, with some fake banana ice cream (just frozen bananas blended in the food processor until they go smooth like ice cream) with a heaped tablespoon of Nutella added to the mix to make it chocolate (fake) ice cream!

The verdict? These aren’t just an experiment… these are the best things the rye sourdough starter has ever made! These are getting made again. If anyone has any tips for making them pop over more next time that would be great!