100% Whole-Wheat Waffles

Does someone in your family make the best…something? Have you ever asked for the recipe? If your family is like mine, what you end up with is a recipe that reads something like this.

You add a little bit of this to the mixture until you get it to the right consistency.

Then you sprinkle some of this and that in until it tastes just the way you want it to.

These recipes frustrate me to no end because up until about 6 months ago I followed recipes religiously. It’s all I knew how to do. I followed them blindly always believing that what the creator had written would turn out as promised if I followed the directions. I lacked the understanding and knowledge to tweak the recipe at all. So when I came across recipes like the one above, I was parallelized and didn’t really know how to move on. Plus even if I did take a chance, I didn’t keep notes in the kitchen so if a miracle did happen and my tweaking worked, repeating my happy mistake was nearly impossible. So what was to be done with Dad’s whole-wheat waffles?

When I got married I wanted to continue some of the traditions I grew up with, like Saturday morning waffles. When I asked my Dad for the family recipe he said:

“The recipe?” while staring at me with a worried look. “Well I guess I could come up with a recipe, I just kinda throw it all together.”

Ergggh!

Over the past 13 years (or is it 14) I’ve been doing my best to make these waffles just like Dad’s. Sometimes I hit; sometimes I miss.

When I started this blog I knew eventually I wanted to share this recipe with all of you but before I could I knew I had to get it right AND it needed to be duplicable so with my handy kitchen notebook in tow, I set out to get it right.

There were two issues with the original recipe that I wanted to change. 1)- I wanted it to be 100% whole wheat and 2)-I wanted to eliminate the sugar.

The biggest problem I had in trying to reach my goal was that the 100% whole-wheat batter was too heavy, even with the egg whites. While the first batch of waffles was cooking on the waffle iron the eggs would separate from the batter leaving a less than ideal runny mess in the bowl for the next batches. The second issue I had was that the waffle, although super tasty with syrup and fixings, wasn’t good enough to stand on its own. After several attempts to add flavor with other sweeteners & flavors I began to think a bland waffle was just the way it was meant to be, after all It would be loaded with fruit, syrup (may I suggest strawberry or white), whipped cream and what have you.

While watching Food Network Star this week, Bobby Flay made a comment on how it was essential for each component of a dish to be able to stand on it’s own while still being able to meld with everything else in the dish and on the side. I knew what had to be done - my goal to keep sugar out of the recipe had to be nixed – a little bit of sugar was necessary to keep the acidity of the baking powder and buttermilk at bay. It worked!

Well, that day has come. I’ve finally done it! I’ve tweaked the recipe just enough so that it can be shared and duplicated. And wouldn’t you know it, the day after I figured it all out, someone emailed me a waffle recipe that was almost exactly the same as what I had come up with. Why didn’t I just google in the first place? You think you have an original idea or an “old family recipe” only to find out that about a million other people had the same idea and the same recipe. How does that happen?

100% Whole Wheat Waffles

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Yield:  20 4x4” waffles (easily halved)
Serving Size 2, 4" waffles

Ingredients:

6 eggs

2 tablespoons lemon juice

~2 cups milk

¼ cup vegetable oil

3 – 3 ½ cups whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon kosher salt

¾ teaspoon cream of tartar

¼ cup sugar (optional)

1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

1. Separate the eggs placing the yolks in a small bowl and the whites in a large bowl or bowl of a stand mixer. Set aside and bring to room temperature (or just long enough to take some of the chill off)
2. Pour 2 tablespoons of lemon juice into a 2-cup measuring cup and then fill the measuring cup to the 2-cup capacity with milk (this is essentially a 2 cup buttermilk substitute but I prefer this to buttermilk in this recipe). Stir the lemon juice and milk together then set aside to sour and thicken.
3. Preheat oven to 200 degrees F and waffle iron to desired setting.
4. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together 3 cups of the whole-wheat flour, cinnamon, baking powder and salt; set aside.
5. With a stand mixer on low, whisk the egg whites until frothy (about 1 minute). Add in the cream of tartar and whisk eggs on high until soft peaks form. With mixer still on high, slowly add ¼ cup sugar (if using) to egg whites until stiff peaks form. With mixer on low add in vanilla until just incorporated. Set aside.
6. Whisk egg yolks, soured milk and oil into the dry mixture. If batter is too runny, whisk in another ½ cup of flour until lump are gone.
7. To temper the batter, stir in a quarter of the egg whites into the batter until well combined then carefully fold in the remaining egg whites. Once folded together, the batter should be airy and silky.
8. Spray your waffle iron with cooking pray then pour a portion of the batter (about 1cup or so) onto the center of your iron, close the top and cook to desired doneness. Place waffle onto a wire rack in the oven until all the waffles are cooked or serve immediately with syrup, fresh fruit or whipped cream.

Source: family file, Apron Appeal original

Nutrition Facts/Info:
Without sugar: Serving Size: 2, 4" waffles. Calories - 231, Fat Calories - 75, Total Fat - 10, Saturated fat - 1.7, polyunsaturated fat - 1.9, Monosaturated - 5, Cholesterol - 113, Sodium - 122mg, Total Carbs - 29, Dietary Fiber - 3.6, Sugars - 2.5, Protein - 10, Vitamin A - 5.6%, Vitamin C - 1.6, Calcium - 9.6%, Iron - 2.4%.

WITH sugar: Serving Size: 2, 4" waffles. Calories - 250, Fat Calories - 75, Total Fat - 10, Saturated fat - 1.7, polyunsaturated fat - 1.9, Monosaturated - 5, Cholesterol - 113, Sodium - 122mg, Total Carbs - 34, Dietary Fiber - 3.6, Sugars - 7.3, Protein - 10, Vitamin A - 5.6%, Vitamin C - 1.6, Calcium - 9.6%, Iron - 2.4%.

Gwenevere