Tag Archives: waffles

Bee Wilson’s almond waffles

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Last year, just after my father died, I made two “grief purchases”. In that sort of ‘fuck it, you only live once’ way one can be after a loved one dies, I didn’t go through my usual checks and balances of ‘do I need this? Is it worth it? Will it earn its keep in the cupboard/on the work surface’. But I didn’t buy an Aston Martin. I bought a waffle maker.

My eldest has always loved waffles. When we used to walk through Whiteley’s department store, on the way to see my mum and dad, on the ground floor there was (still is) a kinda shop/stall which sells, amongst other things, waffles. These waffles are served crowned with squirty cream, chocolate sauce and….Smarties. [We have a Nestle embargo in our house so the Smarties are a very rare treat.]

So imagine my disappointment – which I tried to contain – when I bought a waffle maker, made waffles and my daughter said she wasn’t that keen on them. Not on my waffles anyway (this has happened many times before and I really should be used to it).

But my waffle maker was a top of the range model and I started to panic slightly, I hid it in the cupboard and there I thought it would stay until this January when the fabulous food writer Bee Wilson wrote a recipe for almond waffles in the Guardian.

I made it, they were delicious and this is how we have made waffles ever since. I need to tell you that once I forgot the eggs and although the waffles that were produced were smaller, they tasted like some sort of amazing waffle/doughnut hybrid which I still think about of a morning when I am making these wondering whether I should accidentally forget the eggs again.

Anyway, I love that they have almonds in them, thus lowering the hit on your blood sugar levels. We have these every week now. You can make the mixture the night before (I throw everything into my food mixer), keep it in the fridge and then they are only marginally more work than toast.

I have altered Bee’s original recipe to include a bit of wholemeal flour (20g to 80g of white, plain), as she says on the original recipe, she has also made them using gluten free flour, entirely successfully. I’ve also made them using Sharpham’s Baker’s Blend flour which is a mix of wholegrain and white, entirely successfully.

We serve ours with yoghurt and chopped up fruit and the merest lacing of maple syrup.

80g unsalted butter, melted
20g caster sugar
2 large eggs
100g flour of choice (I’ve made it with gluten-free flour for coeliac friends and it works fine)
80g ground almonds
1 tsp baking powder
170ml whole milk (or almond or coconut milk if you’d rather)
1 tsp vanilla essence

A healthier waffle recipe

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When I bought my waffle maker, I diligently followed the recipes that came with it and they were very good. But I wanted something un peu healthier. There are thousands of waffle recipes on the internet and in books. I personally like to add my sugar, if I add any at all, afterwards in the form of fruit or maple syrup. I found one on an American site which looked good and had a tweak around and now this is pretty much the waffles I make.

This recipe makes about 18 but they freeze well (freeze them flat on a tray then bag up together) and cook splendidly from not quite frozen, but ten minutes out of the freezer. If you toast them straight from the freezer by the time the toaster has defrosted them the waffles have got quite dry. Far better to take a waffle out of the freezer when you first get up, let it defrost at room temperature for ten minutes (who wants to eat when they very first get up anyway?) and then pop it into the toaster for a minute or two.

I eat mine with live yoghurt and berries and maple syrup and, incredibly, this breakfast keeps me going til lunchtime.

I’m sure you could up the wholemeal flour even more if you wanted to.

120g plain wholemeal flour

225g plain white flour

50g porridge oats

110g rice flour

2 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda

2 teaspoons of baking powder

2 teaspoons of fine sea salt

1 litre of full fat milk (or use a combination of milk and yoghurt for an even lighter waffle)

4 eggs, separated

115g melted butter (or coconut oil)

 

Combine all the dry ingredients – the flours, oats, bicarb, baking powder and salt – in a bowl. In a separate bowl combine the milk, egg yolks and melted butter or coconut oil.

In a third bowl, whisk the egg whites until they are stiff. Make a well in the dry ingredients, pour in the butter/milk/egg yolk mixture. Mix everything together until nice blended. Now dollops the egg whites on top and gently fold in.

In my waffle maker I cook these for about 2m45s on the buttermilk setting, but you’ll have to experiment with yours.

 

Waffle maker

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Some years ago, there was  a rival to Argos and that rival was called Shopper’s World. It was, I think, something to do with Woolworth’s because all the Shopper’s Worlds were in Woolworth stores.

It was from there that my sister and I purchased our first waffle maker as teenagers. We went home, gorged on undercooked waffles, felt sick, cleaned it up and returned it for a refund, figuring we’d never want to eat waffles ever again.

And, largely, I didn’t. Until now.

My eldest always begs me for a waffle when we are in London, where you can get them covered in cream and chocolate sauce and sweets. And I have never been a fan of hot cake – which is what waffles seem to me.

Let me make it clear that I think waffle makers are pretty much up there for unessential gadgets in the kitchen. You can only make one thing with them and they don’t really earn their keep. So it’s pretty stupid, I think, to buy a waffle maker.

So I bought the most expensive one I could find: The Smart Waffle Maker by Sage.

I actually saw this waffle maker a while ago in Selfridges or John Lewis (the only London stores I ever go into) and thought “what nutter would spend THAT MUCH on a waffle maker?” And, it later transpired, that would be me.

I did lots of research, of course. The thing with cheaper waffle makers is that they don’t heat up hot enough to give you really crispy waffles – hence the undercooked waffles of yore which made us feel sick. Also the ones with removable plates – which seem so sensible – can’t heat up hot enough for really crispy waffles because of the way the heating element is placed (or something).

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There are two waffle makers in the Sage range: the No-Mess and the Smart Waffle. Have a look and see which one you think would work best for you. The No-Mess is significantly cheaper, has less features and make different shaped waffles but is, I’ll bet, still a brilliant machine. The Smart does all sorts of fancy pants stuff which you probably will never use. (Note from the future: I don’t ever use them, all I use is the on/off button and the timer.)

I haven’t had one single failure in this machine. The moat is brilliant (why why why do all waffle makers not have this??). You can experiment with all sorts of waffles in the safety of your own home: gluten free, wheat free, fun free – if that’s your bag. Me, I just tried to make waffles as healthy as possible whilst still retaining their waffley-ness. (Recipes to follow.)

My eldest has, of course, completely gone off waffles since I bought this. But I can make a batch and freeze them, take one out about ten minutes before I want to eat it and then pop it in the toaster. Thus there are always waffles to eat under piles of yoghurt and berries and a dash of maple syrup. I now eat lots of waffles.

Pros of this machine:

Fool-proof. I think even if you put wallpaper paste in there you’d get amazing waffles.

The moat is brilliant

Wonderfully crisp waffles

Really good (but few) recipes come with the instruction book

Solidly built

It looks great

The non-stick is really non-stick

Cons

Eye-wateringly expensive

You will try to waffle everything for the first week you get it

You will get fat