Recipe in Progress: The Popovers that Didn't Pop

With my recent windfall from an anonymous donor, I bought a popover pan. A really nice one, too! Elliot and I discovered popovers last year, when we started going to the Popover Cafe after his soccer games. Actually, that's when I discovered popovers. Evidently, he got to make them at school, so he'd had them before. I thought that surely if a bunch of kindergarten kids could whip them up, then I could make them at home. So I've just been waiting for the pan.

My shiny, new pan arrived yesterday, so this morning I tried my first batch of popovers. And they didn't pop! Instead, they looked like sad, squat, bland little muffins. They actually tasted OK--kind of like light, spongy biscuits. And with honey butter (yes, I made my own honey butter to go with them) they were not bad at all. But I wanted big old popovers, so it was a big disappointment.


I took the recipe from The New Best Recipe Cookbook, and it was pretty straightforward (eggs, milk, flour, butter), so I'm not sure what went wrong. Most of the recipes I've seen on the web look very similar. Is it possible they didn't rise because I didn't use room temperature eggs? I guess I will try that next time... But could it really make that big a difference? What went wrong? What should I do differently next time? Now that I have invested in a special pan solely devoted to popovers, I've got to get this recipe right!

-Kristin