Make a whole batch of these delicious buttermilk waffles and freeze some for homemade toaster waffles. Recipe below.
ON SATURDAY MORNINGS, IF WE ARE IN TOWN (and let’s face it, these days we still always are), we kind of laze out of bed whenever. We drift down to the kitchen and sit around the island and have boatloads of coffee (me) and tea (Terry). We look out the back door into the tiny backyard and comment on whatever birds are visiting the birdbath (lately, a pair of cardinals are bossing around all other comers). Eventually, one of us makes a late breakfast.
The important part is the quiet just sitting there, chatting in an on-and-off way, listening to classical music on the radio, just hanging out. Sometimes Terry cooks—eggs or French toast usually. And sometimes I cook—either hot oatmeal or a great big batch of buttermilk waffles.
Among the things we love about making waffles is that you can have hot, crisp waffles right away, and then you can freeze any that remain, and have hot, crisp waffles whenever you want them, thanks to your toaster.
This recipe makes about 20 waffles, based on the assumption that you too will want to freeze the extras and enjoy them in the future—homemade toaster waffles! Yes, you can make it even bigger if you are feeling ambitious, and yes, you can cut the recipe in half or even quarter it. But the only reason not to make a massive bunch of these and freeze them is that you do not have a freezer. They are a useful breakfast or lunch. They are a terrific late-afternoon snack. They are just good to have around.
If you make the full recipe, you will have multiple racks strewn around the kitchen to cool them. A nice mix of cozy and I Love Lucy.
We usually do not approve single-use kitchen tools, but we make an exception for our waffle iron. Ours is a very simple Cuisinart given to us 25 or so years ago and still perfectly functional. Interestingly, one our kids recently asked for a waffle iron, which is how we discovered that Cuisinart still makes this same simple, easy to use, inexpensive waffle iron—about 30 bucks. Which is the one we got her.
Buttermilk Waffles
Ingredients
- 3-1/2 cups unbleached white flour
- 3-1/2 tablespoons sugar
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3-1/2 cups buttermilk, shaken well
- 4 large eggs, beaten lightly
- 1 tablespoon vanilla
- 1/2 cup butter, heated just to melting (or mix of melted butter, melted plant butter and neutral cooking oil—your choice of proportions)
- a little oil for the waffle iron
- jam or syrup for serving
Instructions
- Start heating your waffle iron—for a basic model like ours, just plug it into the wall.
- Measure the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a big bowl and stir with a fork.
- Put the buttermilk, beaten eggs and vanilla in a medium bowl and stir to blend well.
- Add the buttermilk mixture all at once to the dry ingredients and whisk everything together until it starts to look like a batter rather than some wet and dry things in disagreement. Add the melted butter/oil and keep whisking until things are blended. It is okay to have some tiny lumps.
- By now, the waffle iron should be nicely heated. Open the iron. Dab a bit of paper towel or lint-free cloth into the extra little bit of cooking oil and swipe it lightly over the surfaces of the waffle iron. (I do this even with our nonstick iron.) Pour in some batter—I use about 1/2 to 2/3 cup for each waffle. Close the iron and cook until the waffles are a nice golden brown—you may have to practice this depending on the way your waffle iron communicates with you. Open the iron, remove the waffle and either serve it to someone immediately or let it cool on a rack. (If you make the full recipe, you will have multiple racks strewn around the kitchen.)
- Repeat until you’ve used all the batter. Finally, eat! We usually cook and cook and cook waffles and then sit down and eat the final ones (with perhaps some this-doesn’t-count-as-eating snacking during the process).
Kitchen Notes
This is one of those dishes mass-produced by the English industrial potteries, crafted to loose standards for an eager American market. Its finish is not anywhere as elegant as pieces that would have been sold to the domestic English market. For instance, if you look closely, you may notice the very visible little white dots around the rim—those are marks left in the firing process by the spacers placed between dishes before they went into the kiln. There are some spots where the glaze has crawled a bit, or where brown spots got in before the glazing. The flowing blue color, which today we see as so gauzily beautiful, was itself originally regarded as a kind of messy mistake (but good enough for American hicks). It is also not unusual to find crockery with the transfer pattern clearly having slipped or with various other dings and mistakes that happened in the manufacturing process: the top of a cup or bowl out of round, a pitcher listing a bit one way or the other, a platter unable to sit flat on the table, so every time you set it down, it wobbles or clatters. But totter and clatter, these dishes still pleased the rapidly growing American market and Americans’ hunger for a bit of beauty and sophistication. And that these pieces have survived for so long shows how much they were, and still are, loved.
I love waffles, and this looks like a dandy recipe. Perfect weekend fare! Much as I like waffles, they’re one of those things I only order out, alas — no waffle iron. I really should break down and get one — it’d be fun to play with. 🙂 Good stuff — thanks.