Sunday Breakfast: Weekend Waffles

Preface: Last week was an unusual one for Jesse and me. He had surgery on his ACL and his parents stayed with us from Wednesday night to Sunday morning. Needless to say, after a long weekend of care-taking and entertaining the injured hubs, I didn't have time to plan a proper Sunday dinner. That being said, Drew still came over and I made pasta, chopped salad and semi-homemade garlic bread and we all watched Shutter Island while eating ice cream sundaes! I guess I could show you guys how I make garlic bread, but since I didn't take any pictures, I'm going to show you another favorite weekend meal of ours, which I made Sunday morning - waffles!

After moving out here, I quickly learned that Jesse likes home cooked breakfast on the weekends. We spend all week eating things like cereal and bagels, so by the weekend it's nice to have something like eggs and toast. I started out just scrambling eggs, then slowly but surely (and I mean slowly) I mastered over-easy (known to some as dippy eggs). After awhile, I started working on pancakes and waffles, but just used boxed recipes.

In the last year, I decided to get daring and started playing around making homemade waffles. The motivation to switch to homemade came when we got married and received a new waffle maker as a wedding gift. (When we first started making waffles, we used Jesse's parents' old waffle maker - the one they used since around the time Jesse was born.) Then for Christmas this year, I was pushed to a whole new level of motivation to use my own recipe because my parents bought us a professional double waffle maker. It's real serious business!

I started out with a recipe I found online, but something about the flavor wasn't quite right and the texture seemed to be a little off. I experimented with a few other recipes, but they didn't seem to have the flavor and texture I wanted either. But finally, a few weekends ago, I came across an almost-perfect recipe on bigoven.com. I tweaked it just a little and poof, perfect waffles!


My (new) Weekend Waffle Recipe

Serves: 3 (or 2 people with enough to freeze for leftovers)

Time: 15 - 20 minutes

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2 egg yolks
1 3/4 cups milk
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
butter and real maple syrup


1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Turn waffle maker on to desired heat setting.

2. In a medium mixing bowl stir together the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder and salt.
[you can use a whisk for this, to minimize utensils used :)]

3. Separate the yolks from the whites into two separate bowls.

[I totally forgot to take a picture of this step, so here is a play-by-play of how to separate egg whites: Crack the egg in half and slowly let the whites drain (read: ooze) into a small bowl. It helps to pass the yolk back and forth between each half of the shell to help the draining process. When only the yolk is remaining in the shell, drop the yolk into a separate small bowl.]

4. Slightly beat the yolks. Add the milk, oil and vanilla and lightly whisk together.

5. Using a hand mixer, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. This takes about 2 minutes (Note: Using a hand mixer takes about 10 minutes off the prep time. Trust me, I tried it by hand the first time - big mistake!)

6. Add the wet mixture (not the egg whites) to the dry mixture and lightly whisk until the two are combined, most of the lumps should be gone.

7. Gently fold egg whites into mixture, leaving a few fluffs of egg white. Do not over mix.

8. Spoon batter into the waffle iron, being careful not to overfill it. Wait for the light to turn on or off (depending on which way your iron swings) before removing waffles. This part is a true test of patience.

9. Serve with butter and real maple syrup. As extra waffles build-up, lay them on a large cookie sheet making sure not to stack them on top of each other and place in a 250 degree oven to keep hot and crisp.

I hope you enjoy these weekend waffles as much as we do :)