Once you Pop, You Can't Stop: Pumpkin Popovers

Delicious and halfway healthy

It's still fall so I'm still all about the pumpkin and squash. Popovers are an eggy bread, similar to Yorkshire pudding.    They've been around since the 1800s. Yorkshire pudding was one of the first breads developed when wheat became popular.  To me, they taste highly reminiscent of French toast. They're called popovers because the steam from the eggy bread causes the crust to rise over the pan, hence they "pop over" the pan.

French toast has 36 carbs.  Popovers have the same amount of carbs as a dinner roll (both have 14 grams of carbs).  It's still not low carb, but it's a decadent treat that would pair well with a low carb meal.  To me, a popover is a lot more filling than a roll, and it has more protein.

I have made them with Atkins flour mix (you could probably use CarbQuick too, but I have no experience).  I think they turned out better than some breads.  Atkins mix tends to make really dry breads, but popovers are already moist because of all the eggs.  My Atkins popovers didn't pop as much as ones using regular flour, but they did pop a little and tasted great.  Just sub the flour in the recipe below for equal parts of Atkins mix.

For my recipe, I ground my own wheatberries in my Vitamix.  I feel like I get the consistency of white flour that way, but the fiber of wheat (less net carbs).  I'm probably deluding myself.  You can use wheat flour, but they will pop less.  They will probably pop more with conventional flour.


It amazed me the first time I baked a popover.  It seems like they don't have any leavening ingredients.  How the heck do they rise?   Unlike quick breads or yeasted breads, it's the steam that makes them rise. When you make this batter, you'll notice that the batter is thinner and runnier than most breads.  The liquid content of the batter produces lots of steam.  Eggs act as part of the liquid, but that's not the only reason there are so many eggs.  The egg protein also acts an emulsifier, protecting the batter from tearing when it stretches.  The egg protein and the gluten in the dough act like a balloon, stretching and filling with the air from the steam.  The middle of a popover is air, so it's mostly hollow.    Eggs help create a nice brown crust on top too. 

Knowing that, you can see that gluten is important in making the pop of a popover.  That is why low carb or gluten free popovers taste ok, but don't pop as high.  The gluten helps create the "balloon."

This is what a popover pan looks like

Heat is also important, as it develops the steam.  I use a specialized popover pan.  It looks like an elongated muffin pan separated with rods.  Those rods allow lots of space between the popovers so heat can move freely around them.  You can also use ramekins or regular muffin pans.  Just be sure not to fill whatever pan you use more than 1/2 to 2/3rds full of mix.  These things will make a mess in your oven.  I put a cookie sheet under my popover pan just in case.

Pumpkin Popovers
3 eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup pumpkin
2 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup milk
1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease your popover pan, ramekin or muffin pan.  Use whatever kitchen oil or spray you like best.
2. I always put my pan on top of the oven while it's preheating.  They pop better if the pan is warm, but I haven't really found much of a different between setting my pan on top of the oven and "preheating" the pan as some recipes suggest.
3. Put all of the ingredients in a food processor, mixer or blender (I use a blender) and mix until smooth (easy).
4. The pumpkin popovers don't pop as much as plain popovers, so fill your cups 2/3 full of mix (should make 6 if you're using a popover pan).
5. Bake in the oven for 50 minutes. Remove the popovers and pierce each in the top with a knife to allow the steam to escape. 
6. They should be easy to remove from the pan, and they are best served warm.

Want plain popovers?  Alton Brown has the recipe I always use as a base. These can made sweet, savory or whatever.  A little cinnamon in them makes them taste almost exactly like French Toast.  I bet cinnamon  would be good in these pumpkin ones too.

Plain popovers pop even more than this.

Nutrition Facts for Pumpkin Popovers

---

Amount Per Serving (makes 6)

Calories:  150

Total fat: 8 g

Protein: 6 g

Total carbohydrate:  14 g

• Dietary Fiber: 1 g
• Sugar: 2 g

Build Me Up Buttercup, Squash Broke My Heart

That's a weird looking pumpkin.

To try to be a little bit healthy, I've decided to sample all the winter squash I can find this year.  Someone told me they all taste the same.  Doubtful.  The local grocery is full of them this time of the year, and they come in all shapes and sizes.  They had one that weighed almost as much as I do.  I'm not sure what variety it was, but it was larger than most jack-o-lantern pumpkins and bright green.  Since they were charging by the pound, and it was more squash then I'll probably eat my lifetime, I passed.

I did buy a few other varieties.  One was buttercup squash. Most squash are low fat and good sources of vitamin C.  Buttercup has vitamin E and some B vitamins too.  It's a low calorie, filling food.  The downside is that each cup has 14 grams of carbs.  It's a bit sweeter than other winter squashes.  Most of the recipes I've found for it call for dousing it with even more sugar.  That's one way to make a healthy food bad.

Buttercup squash should be firm, heavy for their size and have an even cream color.  The ones at my store were quite large, probably about twice the size of an acorn squash.  They look green, squatty pumpkins. 

Buttercup squash taste similar to acorn squash, but are a bit earthier and creamier.

Seriously.  All this work for that?!

I have to be honest.  My experience with this squash was not that great.  I found buttercup squash to be almost impossible to cut into and peel, or at least not worth the effort.  Acorn squash is hard to cut too, but once you cook it, you can easly remove the flesh.  I found this one was even difficult after it was cooked.  I spent a few minutes cursing the squash, but finally got some flesh out.   After all that trouble, there wasn't much flesh.

Maybe I'm a lazy cook.  I preferred the creaminess of buttercup squash to acorn squash, but I think I'll stick to butternut.  It's creamy too, but has more flesh and less problems.

Simply prepared

I roasted it simply with some butter and a bit of cinnamon.  I left the sugar out.  It was good, but not really worth all that effort.  I did have some leftovers.  I think I'll make them into a soup and see what that tastes like.  The creamy nature of this squash should lend itself to soups really well.


With just the butter and cinnamon, 1 cup of buttercup squash has 116 calories, 3 grams of fat, 22 grams of carbs and 4 grams of sugar and 7 grams of fiber.

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls: Fall Faves

Unhealthy, but delicious

 It's fall, so I'm probably going to get a little unhealthy here.  I've been personally trying to avoid carbs and sugar, but those are required baking for friends around this time of the year.  With the holidays season coming up and my favorite goofy holiday, Halloween, it's hard to avoid carbs and unhealthy things.  At least if you do the baking yourself, from scratch, you're less likely to eat too much (that's what I tell myself anyway).

There was a pumpkin recipe contest at a local festival this past week, so I threw in my hat with some delicious pumpkin cinnamon rolls.

Here's a tip about cinnamon rolls.  They are almost always softer right out of the oven.  The main reason is the sugar in the cinnamon filling.  Sugar is hygroscopic, so it sucks moisture out of the dough.  My favorite way to combat that is just covering them in more butter and sugar (icing), or popping them in a microwave for 10-15 seconds.  Yum!  If you're looking for a lower calorie way to combat hard rolls, just use plain cinnamon and butter for the filling.  The rolls will still be good, but less sweet.

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls
Dough
1 cup pumpkin puree
2/3 cups milk
2 tablespoons butter
1 egg
1 package yeast
2-3 cups flour
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp salt

Filling
1 stick melted butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
2 tsp cinnamon (sometimes I use more, I like cinnamon)

Cream Cheese Icing
4 ounces cream cheese
1 stick of melted butter
1 tsp vanilla
2-3 cups powdered sugar
1-3 tablespoons milk

Carmel Glaze
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon milk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup powdered sugar
Pinch of salt

The dough

1. Prehat over to 350 degrees.
2. Heat pumpkin, milk, salt and butter on stove until all are warm and butter is melted. It should be warm to the touch, but not hot (lukewarm)
3. Add pumpkin mixture, yeast, egg, pumpkin pie spice and 2 cups of flour to mixer bowl.  You can use a stand mixer or bread machine or just do it the old fashioned way.  I use a stand mixer.  Adjust flour until you get a dough that is smooth and somewhat sticky.  Knead that dough for about 6 minutes (with a dough hook or bread machine, this is easy).
4. Cover dough and let rest until it doubles in size (about 1 hour).  Prepare filling while you wait.
5. To prepare filling, just mix the melted butter and sugar together in a bowl and mix well.
6. After dough has rested, roll out into a 15 by 10 inch rectangle. 
7. Spoon or brush filling on the rectangle.

   

   Roll the dough (this is for smaller rolls)

8. Roll the rectangle up tightly.  If you prefer more, smaller cinnamon rolls, roll along the 15 inch end.  If you prefer larger, thicker cinnamon rolls, roll on the 10 inch end.  Along the 15 inch should make 12 rolls.
9. Cut the cinnamon rolls, the width depends on your tastes.  I normally make mine 3 fingers wide.  Use a serrated knife for best results (some people use dental floss or string, but being careful and not exerting too much pressure with a serrated knife works).
10. Place either on a baking sheet or Pyrex dish.  Some people like to bake their cinnamon rolls so they touch (like in a Pyrex dish).  Personally, I like mine to be separate and round.  I normally bake them on a baking sheet and spread them apart while they rise and when they bake.
11. Let the rolls rise for 1 hour, until doubled.  At this point, you can also put them in the fridge and let them rise overnight.



Roll size.

12. I sometimes brush the tops of cinnamon rolls with egg yolk, but I don't always. It makes the top shiny.  If you're planning to use a lot of icing, this is a wasted step, but sometimes I just want a drizzle.  For the pumpkin ones, I skipped this step.
13. Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until the center of the cinnamon roll reaches 190 degrees and the tops are golden brown.
14. While they cook, you can make the icing. I used two icings (one is just an accent drizzle).
15. Cream cheese icing: mix cream cheese, butter, vanilla, lemon, milk and 2 cups powdered sugar in a food processor and mix until creamy.  You can add more milk if it's too thick and more sugar if it's too thin.  I like my icing drippy.
16. Caramel drizzle icing: Heat butter, sugar, milk, vanilla and powdered sugar on stove.  Cook for about 8 minutes, until the sauce is a caramel like consistency (about 235 degrees or so).

    

    These rolls are touching, obviously.  They don't form perfect circles.

17. When cinnamon rolls are finished baking, let them cool a little bit before icing.  They should still be warm when you ice them.  I poured the cream cheese icing all over first, then drizzled with the caramel.
18. Enjoy (just not too much, these are very unhealthy).

 

These rolls form more perfect circles

Nutrition Facts for Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls (It's bad)

---

Amount Per Serving (makes 12)

Calories:  486

Total fat: 22 g

Protein: 5.4 g

Total carbohydrate:  73 g

• Dietary Fiber: 1.4 g
• Sugar: 47 g

On the other hand, a Cinnabon is 730 calories and 114 grams of carbs.  Those Pillsbury canned cinnamon rolls are much better.  They are 145 calories and 23 grams of carb.  A McDonalds cinnamon roll is 340 calories and 52 grams of carbs.  

You could cut the calories considerably by limiting the icing.  With no icing, it's just 304 calories, 18 grams of fat, 32 grams of carbs (7.5 sugar and 1.4 grams of fiber).  Since it's still not healthy, where's the fun in that?

Transformers, Pasta in Disguise: Spaghetti Squash

Low Carb Spaghetti? For real? Heck, yeah!

I don't like most fake pastas.  I've tried those shirataki noodles that Hungry Girl raves about and they made me sick.  I just can't take the weird mouth feel of them.  I'm not even a big fan of wheat pasta.  I like Dreamfields, but my blood sugar reacts to that almost like it does normal pasta so why pay the extra for it?  I often make my own pasta, but it's really not much healthier than the store bought stuff.  It just tastes better.

I hadn't tried spaghetti squash until my mom decided to go low carb.  I've always seen them in the grocery store and thought, "What kind of demon vegetable claims to transform into spaghetti?  That thing has to be the results of some kind of dark magic."  That and I thought it would taste like eating pasta sauce over yellow squash.  Yuck.

Since I'm challenging my perceptions of vegetables, I bought one and I can't believe I've lived all these years without them.  I've eaten it every week since then, because pasta is my weakness.  To me, spaghetti squash are just as easy to prepare as regular spaghetti, and almost as tasty.  The squash has a little bit of a crunch that pasta doesn't, but other than that, I find it quite nice.

I'm not going to give you a recipe for sauce in this post.  I've found this squash takes just about any type of sauce you can throw at it.  I've made it with regular marinara, chunky marinara, pesto, tossed it with vegetables and olive oil, tossed it with olive oil and herbs ... the only thing I've found it didn't taste great with is Alfredo sauce and other cream sauces (some people like it with Alfredo too).  That is awesome for low carb dieters, because you have almost all the variety of meals that pasta can give you, but it's low carb and low calorie.  Woo!

Squastimus Prime: Ready to transform.

When buying a spaghetti squash, choose one that is heavy for its size.  The smaller ones generally taste better, but even a small spaghetti squash should be large, compared to most squashes (except pumpkin).  They are generally about 8 inches by 5 inches.  They should be uniform in color without too many blemishes and no soft spots.  You want to feel it to make sure the flesh is firm all around.  The one picture is a little ugly, but it's still a good squash.  The flesh is firm, and a few blemishes are ok.

This thing is so amazing.  It lasts forever.  If you store it in a root cellar, it can last up to 6 months before it goes bad.  Even at room temperature, you have a few weeks before it starts going bad.  It also freezes well.  I can't eat a whole spaghetti squash.  It makes about 4-5 servings.  It tastes fine reheated too, but I don't like to eat the same thing every day.  I cook it and shred it (see below) and then put the spaghetti in a freezer bag.  It reheats and tastes about the same.  I've never frozen it with sauce, but I guess that would be ok too.  I use the sauce to heat the frozen squash up for 4-5 minutes.

I always give you the nutritional information, but the fact is that the spaghetti squash isn't really that nutritious.  It's mostly water.  Other winter squashes are better for you.  It's what it's lacking that makes it a great substitute for regular spaghetti.    According to the USDA, 1 cup of spaghetti squash has 42 calories, 0.4 gram of fat, 10 g of carbs (4 grams of sugar) and 2.2 g of fiber.  Compare that to regular spaghetti.  One cup of spaghetti gives you 220 calories, 1.3 grams of fat, 43 grams of carbs (0.8 grams of sugar) and 2.5 grams of fiber.   I can have a whole spaghetti squash for one serving of spaghetti.


You also have to factor in your sauce.  It can be low carb, high carb, low calorie, high calorie, nutritious or not.  The choice is between you and your pancreas.

You can cook spaghetti squash in a variety of ways from crock pots to pressure cookers, but the easiest and quickest way is to stick the whole thing in the microwave.  I was once told by a professional chef that a true food lover would never have a microwave in their house.  How pretentious. Microwaves are perfect for certain tasks, and cooking spaghetti squash is one.

To microwave the squash, you just poke a few holes in it with a knife (so it won't explode) and pop it in a microwave whole for about 12 minutes.  Let it cool for another 5-10 minutes before you split it open.  Baking and boiling a whole squash takes about an hour.  Sticking one in the crock pot takes all day.  A pressure cooker takes about 12 minutes too.  Alternatively, you can speed up the cooking by cutting the squash into cubes before you cook it, but these guys are hard to cut when raw.  The cubes makes shredding it a lot less fun.

After it's cooked and cooled, the next step is to cut it in a half and remove the seeds and the pulp, the slimy stuff that holds the seeds in.  You're going to think you've been gypped.  It doesn't look much like spaghetti at all.   It looks like a pumpkin.  Like pumpkin, that slimy stuff is not tasty, so even if you have to remove a bit of the flesh, get it all.  The seeds can be saved and roasted.  They taste a little like pumpkin seeds. 

What the...That doesn't look like spaghetti.

The next step is the most fun part.  You get to make spaghetti.  Invite your friends over and show them how awesome you are.  Just take a fork and rake up and down the cleaned flesh and you'll get "noodles."  I generally prop mine up in a bowl and shred the spaghetti squash over it.

That's more like it.

 I find that spaghetti squash taste best cooked with the sauce.  It's ok if you just pour the sauce over it, but cooking them together makes it really shine.  Most recipes serve the sauce over the squash, so I may be in the minority. You should try it with a variety of sauces and techniques and see what you like best.  You can pretty much do anything with it you can do with normal spaghetti, including baking it in a casserole. I've even seen a recipe for a mock lasagna with it.  The spaghetti squash was layered with lasagna ingredients.  My favorite way to eat it is sauteed with some fresh vegetables, olive oil, garlic and herbs.  I get the vegetables going first and add the squash in the last few minutes.  Yum!

"Noodles" close up.

Nutrition Facts

---

Amount Per Serving (1 cup of spaghetti squash, cooked with no sauce)

Calories: 42
Total fat: 0.4 g
Protein: 1 g
Total carbohydrate: 10 g

• Dietary Fiber: 2.2 g
• Sugar: 4 g