Last week, over IM, M informed me that he wanted to make waffles this weekend. Potato-cornmeal waffles, he said. With bacon and cheddar. Because I am a reasonable person, I responded as anyone would— “YAY!! WAFFLES!!”— and the deal was done.
Potato-Cornmeal Waffles
Saturday morning, it was revealed that, although M had A Vision for Sunday Waffles, he did not have a recipe, or even a starting point for a recipe. Also, that the person making waffles would be me—probably because 1) the waffle maker is mine and 2) I’ve made an effort to stake out most baking-type stuff as My Cooking Thing, so I can claim some sort of cooking felicity in the face of M’s slightly-daunting ability to sort of toss a bunch of things together and magically make a pile of awesome without relying on things like recipes.
I, however, cannot really cook things without recipes. Not new things, anyway—I have been known to make modifications to my stockpile recipes, but that is not at all the same as tossing a bunch of ingredients together and somehow ending with edible food. And, in fact, my nearly-disastrous dinner attempt on Saturday night bears this out. Did you know that you can accidentally make a syrupy kind of horrible-tasting emulsion with butter, olive oil, garlic, lemon, and white wine? You can! Fortunately, I had pulled the shaved asparagus and garlic scapes out before I made the terrible emulsion, so M saved dinner with a butter sauce, and we ate okay-but-not-exciting pasta with asparagus & scapes with butter sauce. Also, FYI, shaved scapes can cook up kind of woody, but shaved asparagus is pretty good.
Eggs, Mashed Potato, Melted Butter
Dry Ingredients
Clearly, finding a recipe to start from was Step One. Fortunately, the internet is an awesome cookbook, so I hit my go-to sources first. Smitten Kitchen has a recipe for Pumpkin Waffles, and Epicurious had one for Cornmeal Waffles. Subbing mashed potatoes for pumpkin & taking bits from the Cornmeal Waffle recipe, I whipped up a batch of pretty decent waffles, and, huzzah! breakfast!
Waffle Iron & Batter
If you’re a person who grew up with Bisquick waffles, like me, scratch waffle batter seems kind of fiddly. And starting a scratch-waffle-batter recipe with “first, make some mashed potatoes” seems extra fiddly, especially when you realize that you need to make sure that you’ve got time to cool your mashed potatoes so they don’t cook the egg yolks when you mix them.
And doing all this stuff on Sunday morning before you can have breakfast can be a little challenging, if what you want is a nice mellow hang-out with your coffee and the internet. But! If you make a couple of batches of waffles, you can freeze ‘em, and then you’ll have nice waffles to take to work for breakfast for a week or so, and that’s nice.
And if you’re lucky, you’ll make a batch of slightly fiddly waffles and your boyfriend will thank you for making his breakfast vision a reality, and that’s nice too.
Waffle Batter
Potato-Cornmeal Waffles
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen’s Pumpkin Waffles, with a touch of Epicurious’s Cornmeal Waffles
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup cornmeal
2 Tablespoons lightly packed light brown sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs, separated
2 cups buttermilk*
1 cup (cooled!) mashed potatoes
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted & cooled
Vegetable oil for brushing waffle iron or cooking spray
*Bob’s Red Mill makes a dry buttermilk powder, similar to powdered milk, and that’s what I used. I’m not sure how much/what difference fresh buttermilk might make. Some people may have buttermilk on hand regularly, but if you’re not one of those people, this is an available alternative.
Preheat oven to somewhere around 200-250°F (to keep waffles warm between coming off the waffle iron & getting to the table—if you’re tossing waffles out to table as you make them, ignore this step!) and preheat waffle iron (or not, if you know your waffle iron & don’t care to do so). Sift together flour, brown sugar, baking powder and soda and salt. Whisk egg yolks in a large bowl with buttermilk, mashed potatoes, and butter until smooth. Whisk in dry ingredients just until combined.
Whisk the egg whites until they hold soft peaks. Fold gently into the waffle batter, until just combined.
Brush waffle iron lightly with oil and pour batter onto to waffle iron. Cook to taste, relying on your knowledge of your waffle iron’s vagaries and temperamental issues.
Transfer waffles to oven rack to keep warm. Make waffles until you’re out of batter!
Serve with butter & syrup, bacon crumbles, cheese, whatever you like! I had mine with butter, bacon, and maple syrup. M had bacon, cheese, and butter on his. Both topping combinations were deemed successful.
This recipe made about 6 ½ waffles in a regular waffle iron.
Waffle in Iron
