Waffle Throwdown

Wednesday, October 8, 2008, by Sherra

I’ve never tried to be a food blog. There are 13 recipes on this blog.

There are more pictures posted here of food that I have ordered while dining out than of food I’ve actually cooked.

Like that yummy Folded Ear Pasta.
Or that fabulous “Original Pizza Cookie”
Or my favorite North Carolina Vittles.

This might make you think I don’t know how to cook. Au contraire. (That’s French for “on the contrary” - see I can be fancy if I want to.)

I am an excellent cook.

Even better, I have taught PhilBillPaul to be a pretty darn good cook. He does most of the cooking these days.

Because I let him.

For tips on how to train your husband to cook, I offer these suggestions:

Stop cooking.
They will get hungry.
They will get tired of fast food.
They will get tired of frozen dinners.
Casually leave recipes lying around the house.
If the recipes have pictures of the food, even better.

Next, be helpful and offer to show them how to make something easy first. It’s hard to ruin breakfast. Remind them about how much you love, love, love breakfast. Remind them of how nice you will become when someone makes breakfast for you.

No, you don’t mean the cook making your breakfast who wiped his sweaty brow and then wiped the counter at Waffle House.

Oh yes he did.

Oh no I’ve never been back.

To that location anyway. Because all the other locations are so much cleaner.

My friend Leigh Anne is quite the foodie that I have never claimed to be. She probably could win cooking competitions. She would also win competitions involving taking great food pictures in Rembrandt lighting. And she’d win in the pretty dishes category too. She finds the pretty in everything.

Me, not so much. I just mostly care if it tastes good and it’s easy. Not very refined, I know. We are just farm food people loving the kind of down home cooking found at Gray Brothers Cafeteria.

Minus Pork-n-Beans Cake or Imogene’s fried squirrel.

When Leigh Anne posted her family’s favorite waffle recipe I was excited. By excited I mean I was excited to have PhilBillPaul make them so I could eat them. And I was excited that the recipe is made the night before which would cut down his kitchen prep time for our traditional Sunday Brunch meal.

Because in addition to teaching him to cook, I like to offer up time management tips whenever I can.

The waffles were good.

But when you’ve had great, it’s hard to settle for good. Without further buildup, and with no disrespect to Leigh Anne’s waffle recipe, here is my waffle throwdown.

I bring you The Best Waffle Recipe. Ever.

Maryland Cream Waffles

2 C cake flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
2 tsp granulated sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs, separated
1-3/4 C milk
1/2 C melted butter

Preheat waffle iron. Sift together the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. In a separate bowl, combine egg yolks and milk and mix well. Add the butter and mix again.

Add the dry ingredients to the liquid ingredients, and beat until lumps disappear and the batter is smooth and creamy. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold them into the batter just until no streaks of white show.

Bake in the waffle iron until lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Do not overcook. Makes 12 waffles.

Recipe from Atlanta Journal-Constitution many years ago, submitted by Ramona Berg-Perry, Willmar, Minn. There is actually a healthier “light” version, if you’re interested in that one, just email me.

Imagine - and you’ll have to since there is no picture - how good these would be with Leigh Anne’s homemade cinnamon syrup and fresh whipped cream and berries.

Um, yeah you’ll have to keep imagining that because I eat mine with that syrup in the fancy brown bottle…Mrs. Butterworth’s.

Get wild - have breakfast for dinner one night or make these this weekend and tell me if you love these waffles as much as we do.

Or if you have an even better, favorite waffle recipe don’t hold out on me - share it right here in the comments so I can have PhilBillPaul whip them up!

Next week: Pancake Throwdown in honor of ~~Ann~~ my unnamed friend who had never made pancakes with anything except Bisquick and she thought I was kidding when I wrote that we have more than one homemade
favorite pancake recipe.