Please help me make tasty, low-carb popovers
September 22, 2014 7:30 AM   Subscribe

I'm on a low-carb diet, but I'm beginning to get bored of a life without pasta, sweets or baked goods. So this weekend I made these low-carb pop-overs with almond flour. They tasted OK, but they had the consistency of rather compact muffins, not the fluffy lightness of pop-overs, and in fact they did not "pop over" the muffin tin but stayed inside.

I have little experience baking, so I am asking the hive-mind: can I improve these? Perhaps with baking powder, yeast or — my mom's secret for fluffy matzo balls — club soda? Or is fluffiness in baked goods something I will never attain without gluten, and therefore wheat or other high-carb flours? If the latter, I note that gluten itself is a protein, so presumably fine for my low-carb diet. Can I get it by itself and add it to my almond flour for fluffiness? All suggestions, advice and anecdotes welcome.
posted by ubiquity to Food & Drink (11 answers total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
A popover is basically a simple souffle, and souffle's get their souffliness from beaten egg whites, so, in addition to the 2 eggs already in the recipe, I would try beating one or two egg whites to soft peaks and gently folding that into the batter right before filling the muffin tins.
posted by sparklemotion at 7:36 AM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


Just an anecdote- I find that coconut flour works much better than almond flour at making low-carb fluffy things. I use it to make pancakes and they are pretty much indistinguishable from the kind made with flour.

I don't really have specific suggestions for using coconut flour in that recipe but perhaps start by just doing a 1-for-1 swap of the two flours?

PS if you would like my pancake recipe, memail me. It may help with your boredom and desire for baked goods.
posted by joan_holloway at 7:36 AM on September 22, 2014 [5 favorites]


Have you tried anything using coconut flour? I have also heard of people adding psyllium fiber, xanthum gum, and protein powders to try to make low-carb/gluten free things seem more... normal.

Personally, speaking as a gluten-free and very low carb (keto) eater, trying to recreate baked goods is the path to disappointment. Nothing I have made has ever come close to the texture of gluteny/carby foods. I tried... good lord, I tried. Even back when I wasn't low carb and was just gluten free I tried to make good baked goods with non-gluten ingredients and I never really succeeded. Once I successfully made a coconut flour banana bread (FAR from being low-carb) and it was good, but still wasn't the same as normal banana bread, and I was never able to reproduce it. So for me, I have given up on trying to make low-carb knock offs of foods other than making cauliflower crust pizza (which is delicious but frankly is nothing like real bread crust). Instead I make really awesome sauces to go with my low carb foods. Bearnaise sauce, for example... there is nothing better than home made bearnaise sauce.
posted by PuppetMcSockerson at 7:38 AM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


The Comfy Belly cookbook has a recipe for coconut flour popovers. It's pretty good but I don't think I've had a legit popover since I was a child, so I can't vouch for authenticity.

Here it is:

4 eggs
1/2 cup milk (any time--coconut, almond, heck even cow)
1/4 tsp salt
2 T coconut flour

Preheat oven to 425 F and prepare a muffin tin with cups or grease (I've found coconut flour is sticky so I'd use muffin cups). Whisk ingredients until fully blended and a bit bubbly. Fill the muffin or popover wells about 2/3 full with batter. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the popovers are brown on top.

Serve hot with butter!
posted by chaiminda at 7:47 AM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


Seconding @sparklemotion about the egg whites. You might look at this recipe for low-carb rev rolls. It's highly flexible -- you can cheddar cheese for part of the cream cheese, and it would come out tasty. I personally use a whoopie pie pan and bake these as rolls, but I see no reason why you couldn't put them in a muffin tin and bake them as pop-overs. They do rise a lot in the cooking.

I also agree with @PuppetMcSockerson that low-carb versions of high-carb things are inherently disappointing. I try to approach them as their own thing, rather than a replacement thing, if that makes any sense. I really like rev rolls and would keep making them even if I gave up a low carb diet.
posted by OrangeDisk at 7:56 AM on September 22, 2014


Egg whites might help you trap more air...maybe. There are a couple of techniques for getting air in something with egg white. One is what you do in a souffle, a meringue, or cakes in general: beat egg whites and fold them into the batter. Another is what you do in popovers, choux pastry, and similar items: you make a batter that's silky but has enough tension to hold together so it inflates like a balloon. Whether either of those works for you in this recipe, that's just experimentation. Souffles can be made with all variety of interesting things, do keep in mind that they're sensitive to vibrations and temperature changes while baking.

Gluten is available a a product by itself, I buy it all the time for bread baking. I'm a little skeptical that it would work (or even be palatable) when mixed with almond flour. I use powdered almonds for cookies, Linzertorte, things like that--a very different consistency than a popover.

Baking powder, carbon dioxide provided by yeast, even fat cut in with a pastry blender--those are ways of getting air and general expansion into into the thing you're making. Results might be more crumbly (like a biscuit) depending on the consistency of the batter; that's why how you trap the air in place becomes important.

Personally, I think the person who put "popover" in that recipe title was being overoptimistic or not entirely honest.
posted by gimonca at 8:00 AM on September 22, 2014 [2 favorites]


I am not sure why the original recipe includes a cup of cream. Most popover recipes use milk, and cream is a big heavy difference. I think the first thing I'd try is to use milk instead of cream, and then try variations on flours.
posted by Dashy at 8:13 AM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


Do you know how to make choux? Profiteroles are essentially a kind of popover, and can be made from any standard profiterole recipe substituting chickpea flour 1:1. NB: I do not know the carbohydrate content of chickpea flour, so this may not work for you.

Also, what Dashy said; liquids contribute to fluffiness only inasmuch as they flash to steam and separate layers. Cream has less water content than milk, so does not provide as much leavening.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:14 AM on September 22, 2014


I use a mixture of almond flour and potato starch to make my gluten free baking fluffier. If you use 5/8 almond flour and 3/8 potato starch it makes light fluffy pancakes that are indistinguishable from the real thing. The other thing that helps is adding half a mashed banana.
posted by yogalemon at 8:35 AM on September 22, 2014 [2 favorites]


Like others above, I've pretty much given up on recreating high carb baked goods. Popovers are hard to do right even with wheat flour. A cup of even the best blanched almond flour just does not act like a cup of wheat flour. The closest I've gotten to a reasonable substitute that measures 1:1 volume for flour is a blend of whey protein, oat fiber, and almond flour in equal volumes. Coconut flour is great, but find recipes made for it because it is nothing like wheat flour.

Reading the recipe, I wouldn't expect it to work to make real popovers, but would come out like dense muffins. There's nothing to give it rise, either chemically or physically. The cream would not help at all.

Nothing I've tried has made a non-wheat Dutch Baby come out right either.

Try looking for recipes in the forum at Low Carb Friends, not the ones that have been pulled out onto the website. There's more feedback in the forums. The community there is very nice, I've been a member for a few years now. They collectively know a lot about baking.
posted by monopas at 2:47 PM on September 22, 2014


@Deshy - I think the recipe calls for cream rather than milk because milk is terribly high in carbs.
posted by getawaysticks at 12:22 PM on September 23, 2014


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