Recipe: Whole Wheat Waffles

Tonight, I made Whole Wheat Waffles for dinner!  My kids have always loved eating breakfast at a time that you wouldn't expect.  Go ahead, ask them where they want to go out to eat... they will start with Denny's, IHOP and then a local diner.  

So I'm again referencing a recipe from Lisa over at 100daysofrealfood.com (Thanks!)

INGREDIENTS

• 2 large farm fresh eggs
• 1 ¾ cups milk 
• ¼ cup oil (I tried coconut oil for the first time *see below)
• 1 tablespoon honey (I used Once Again's Dawes Hill Wildflower Pure Raw Honey, Made in NY!)
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 ½ cups whole-wheat flour (I used Red Mill's organic whole-wheat flour)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ⅛ teaspoon salt
• Warmed 100% pure maple syrup for serving
• Fresh fruit for serving

     Makes 8-9 Belgium Style Waffles

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat your waffle iron.
2. In a large mixing bowl whisk together the eggs, milk, oil, honey, cinnamon, and baking soda until well combined.
3. Add in the flour, baking powder, and salt and whisk together just until the large lumps disappear.
4. When the waffle iron is hot, dab it with a little butter and then ladle some batter onto the center of the iron. Follow the instructions that came with your waffle maker to know how long it should be cooked (mine takes about 5 minutes each).
5. Keep waffles warm until you finish cooking all of them. Top with pure maple syrup and fruit. Enjoy!

I had always used a basic waffle recipe from The Joy of Cooking and found this to be so much easier, without having to separate the eggs, whip the whites and then fold them back in, which never blended well.

*I  ran into an issue, as I had just bought Coconut Oil for the first time at Wegmans (Our grocery store of choice) the other day and remembered it being a liquid. When I took it out of the cabinet, it was a solid white mass!  After some research, coconut oil turns into a solid when the temperature is under 76 degrees or so, as the temperature is here today.  It isn't affected by this change in property, but I had to warm it up in order to use it.  However, as soon as I mixed it with the liquid ingredients, the cold milk immediately made the oil clump again.  I was concerned with this, but it proved to not be an issue!

Any waffle maker should work, 100 Days of Real Food used an "Eggo" style machine, I have a "Belgium" style and it worked great.  It rose a lot more than the Joy of Cooking recipe, so I had some spillover on the first batch.  I probably would have ended up with 9 waffles, but due to overfilling the first 4, I only got 8.

I cut up some fresh peaches and raspberries to put on top and the kids wanted whipped cream, so I prepared that too.  That was easy, heavy cream whipped to stiff peaks with a teaspoon or two of maple syrup to sweeten it a bit for the kids.  

The moment of truth, would they eat these up like they did my old recipe?  Yes!!  My son "C" gobbled his up so fast I had barely started eating mine!  We decided at dinner to use a rating system for these recipes to help us decide what we like and don't. On a scale of 1-10 (low-high) this recipe scored a 10 across the board, it surpassed my expectations for what a waffle could be!