Power Waffles Recipe

A delicious yeast-leavened waffle recipe featuring oats, buckwheat flour, and crystallized ginger. A denser, heartier, more nutritious waffle, they also take longer to cook than a standard waffle, so they might not be the best choice for a waffle bar get-together.

Today's waffle recipe was inspired by a visit from two friends. About a week ago, we broke out the extra towels, pillows, and bedding for house guests. Emily and Birdie were coming to stay for a night or so. Two girls, their guitars, and a rental car making a springtime journey across the country to play music and sing in a handful of small clubs and venues.

They came bearing a huge quart of beautiful maple syrup for us to enjoy. Not just any maple syrup mind you, this is pure maple syrup from Emily's family. They run the organic Spring Hills Farm in northeastern Pennsylvania. This is the best maple syrup I've ever tasted. It is a grade A medium amber pure maple syrup and has a bright, delicate, and buttery maple flavor - it is outrageously delicious. Night and day from what people typically buy at the local supermarket. Many popular brands of pancake syrup you find in the grocery store are actually made from corn syrup or cane sugar with just a small percentage of real maple syrup.

A lot of times syrups are just too dark, too rich, and too sweet for me - not the case here. This one is delicious and light enough to eat straight from the spoon. It is complementary without being overpowering, which makes it easy to integrate into everyday cooking, snacking, and eating. It took me a few days to move past sampling it straight - this included dunking my finger into the mason jar, and licking the backs of syrup coated spoons. I've also been drizzling it on piping hot bowls of oatmeal in the morning, and on cups of homemade plain yogurt in the afternoon. Waffles and pancakes couldn't be far off, could they?

I stumbled on a cryptic recipe for yeast-based waffles last week in the current issue of the Slow Food periodical and thought I would give it a shot. When I say cryptic, I'm not kidding. The recipe lacks punctuation, gets entirely cut off 3/4 of the way through, and requires conversion from the metric system. Outside of the metric issue, I think the rest must have been a printing problem or something. Regardless, it sounded good enough to give it a shot and I decided I would wing it a bit.

The recipe comes from an article featuring the The Cafe at the Ross School Center for Well-being. Ross being a private school grades 5 through 12 in East Hampton New York. The waffles are yeast leavened and feature oats, buckwheat flour, and chopped, flavor-packed, crystallized ginger. These are not your standard white flour waffles....the oats and buckwheat make for a denser, heartier, more nutritious waffle. They also take longer to cook than a standard waffle, so they might not be the best choice for a waffle bar get-together. That being said, they are delicious, and packed with bursts of flavor - the scent of cinnamon will permeate your entire house.

I'm rewriting the instructions in my own words. Be sure to serve these waffles lavished with lots of warm, pure maple syrup. In case you are curious, you can see the original version of the Power Waffle recipe here.

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Breakfast Recipes

Power Waffle Recipe

1 1/2 cups non-fat milk (divided)
3/4 cup crystallized ginger
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon fresh (compressed) yeast
1 1/4 cups Sir Galahad all-purpose flour
3/4 cup buckwheat flour
150 g (5.3 ounces) rolled oats
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 egg whites (heidi note: I ended up using 4)
1/3 cup melted butter

The night before, gently warm 1/2 cup of the milk and dissolve the yeast. Don't heat the milk too much or it will kill the yeast. Chop the ginger and steep it in a different 1/2 cup of hot milk, let it steep for ten minutes, so the milk becomes flavored. Combine the remaining 1/2 cup milk with the steeped ginger milk and the yeast milk.

In a separate large bowl combine all the dry ingredients. Pour in the milk liquids and stir until combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, cover with plastic, and leave to rise on a counter overnight.

The next morning, heat up your waffle iron. Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Whip the egg whites in a mixer (heidi note: I'm still not sure if they meant whip or whisk...the recipe doesn't say anything about whipping into peaks, and it doesn't say anything later about carefully folding in the whites, so this time I went on the assumption that they really meant for us to whisk the whites a bit - folding in whites might be interesting too though, and might lighten up the waffles a bit.) Using a mixer with paddle attachment (or by hand) stir in 3/4 of the butter. Mix until fully incorporated. Add the egg whites, and finish by stirring in the rest of the melted butter.

Ladle waffle batter onto heated waffle maker, and cook until deep and golden brown.

Makes about 6 average-sized waffles.

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Comments

whoops, here’s that URL for John’s sourdough waffles
http://mywebspace.wisc.edu/dsshapiro/web/recipes/waffles.html
deb

deb

My family has been eating a yeasted sourdough waffle, based on Marion Cunningham and a recipe from King Arthur Flour – posted in very 1990s looking style at the URL above – that recipe includes whipping & folding in the whites, so when I tried the power waffles this weekend, here’s what I did –
I left out the crystallized ginger because John doesn’t like it.
The night before mix was the milk, yeast, sugar, cinammon, a heaping half cups oats, the buckwheat and the flour.
In the morning, I added the butter, 3 egg yolks, 1 tsp. baking powder, and the whipped whites, and a little water because the batter was too thick – I plan to reduce the oats to a scant half cup, and maybe take the flour down to just one cup.
They were very tasty, crunchier than my standard recipe, and as Heidi said, soak up the syrup – we often eat my regular recipe plain, out of hand, and that is how I had the leftover power waffles for breakfast today – plain & toasted!

deb

hi heidi, love reading your blog. your post on maple syrup brought back memories of my childhood when my grandmother would serve tiny portions of fresh sap (khejur ras) from the date palm tree in her tiny orchard. the rest of the sap would be heated in large woks and made into gur, a sweet that is used to flavour various kinds of indian desserts or just simply eaten with rotis (indian bread).
and i’ve ordered your book on amazon and am waiting for it to arrive! my friend lulu seems to love it (http://lulumanhattan.blogspot.com/2005/04/cook-10-bowls-me-over.html)

rumy narayan

Every year my son works for a place in Alaska that produces birch syrup. It is some of the best syrup I’ve ever tasted! If you’re interested it’s birchboy.com and the 100% birch is the best. I use it in coffee and on oatmeal, and just about anything else I can think of!

Janet

Paul. Let me know if you end up folding the egg whites into your batch. We can compare notes. My guess is that they will collapse quite a lot as you try to integrate them into the dense batter, but might lighten them up a bit. Curious if it is worth the extra step. -h

Heidi

This is the exact kind of waffle recipe I was looking for before I made mine this weekend! (my last post). Mine are like frozen Eggo toaster waffles compared to these.
Although I did whip the whites into peaks and fold them in carefully, and they did turn out very light.
Thanks for working out that recipe, I’m trying it out this weekend.

paul

just found this site, i am blown away. love the pics and recipe. found a great cookbook for use with my grandaughters. i’ll be here often, thanks! dp

donna

If you grow tired of maple syrup for breakfast (though I don’t see how you could!) you might try this tart I found & made a few weeks ago:
1 c heavy cream, 3 egg yolks, and 1/3 c maple syrup – whisk together until smooth. Prebake a simple tart crust, like pate sucree, for 10 minutes and let cool. Then pour the custard in and bake about 30 minutes, just until set. Chill & serve drizzled with more syrup.
Simple & sublime.
Heidi, I love your book. I got it for Christmas, and once I finished drooling over the pictures and actually made some of the recipes, I loved it even more.

china

T + A…
Tian, There is a delicious banana macadamia pancake recipe from my book posted on the site. Altaf, I made a delicious Irish Soda Bread recently. Just use the little search box on the lefthand column to look up what you are after, or browse the archives.
Folkie – I get the Slow Food periodical through my membership. I think you automatically get it if you join along with a lot of other great perks – events, tastings, newsletters, etc.
I’m keeping a list of all these fantastic maple syrup ideas. Tana that syrup sounds out of this world.
-h

Heidi

Damn, Melissa beat me to it – maple syrup in your coffee is sooo delicious!

amanda

Lucky you! In college I lived with a girl from New Hampshire, whose family used to send us bimonthly gallons of maple syrup from their area. I discovered it’s delicious on everything from pizza (onions caramelized with maple syrup, goat’s cheese and olives!) to ice cream, but my favorite way to consume it was in drinks: I sweetened my coffee with it, and on cold days I made hot maple syrup, lemon and ginger tea. Nothing better!

Melissa

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