Plum Waffles And How To Make A Crispy Waffle

After several months of hard work, the remodel of our second floor is nearly finished! So much so that I was actually able to enjoy a little hard-earned breakfast in bed of sweet plum waffles without any painters tape or ram board in sight, huzzah!!! I’ll share the whole before & after process once we finish painting the stairwell and installing a neat little hand railing, but for now you can enjoy this peek at half of the room 🙂 One of my favorite parts of the new space has been upgrading our bed-situation. Jeremy built us a neat floating bed frame, and we *finally* got the natural linen queen set from Rough Linen that I’d been drooling over for months, ever since Carey read about it as the group favorite in the linen sub-reddit and promptly gushed over them. I love the weight of it, the linen duvet cover is heavier which feels like I’m being gently hugged the entire night as I sleep; there’s something very instinctually comforting about it. The heaviness also means that it will last through my excessive twisting and turning (I’m an active dreamer) for years instead of months. It’s also nice to support a small maker that’s passionate about what they do, too. The only downside is that the dogs definitely can’t sleep in the bed with us anymore, since I don’t want to risk getting the linens damaged – Sequoia has a tendency to “make” her bed before sleeping, and by “make” I mean claw to shreds for several minutes. She also likes to take any table scraps she manages to get ahold of straight to the bed for some good gnawing. So yeah, no big bed for the pups. As for me, though, I decided to celebrate the new space by indulging in a little breakfast in bed (I am the only one in my house I trust to eat on these without dripping.)

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Plum Waffles

Course Breakfast

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 40 minutes

Servings 6 waffles

Author Eva Kosmas Flores

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 3/4 cups whole milk (at room temperature)
• 2 eggs (whites and yolks separated)
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 6 tablespoons melted butter
• 3 ounces chopped fresh plums
• mascarpone and maple syrup (optional for serving)

Instructions

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, with two racks inside the oven and a baking sheet on each rack.

2. Combine the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl. Set aside.

3. Whisk together the milk, butter, egg yolks, sugar, vanilla extract, and vanilla bean paste until combined. Pour into a blender and add the chopped plums. Blend at high speed until smooth.

4. Pour the milk mixture into the flour mixture and stir until combined. Set aside.

5. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites at high speed until soft peaks form. Fold the whites into the batter.

6. Heat the waffle iron according to the manufacturer's directions. Ladle some of the batter onto the hot iron, (mine takes about 2/3 cup batter to fill the iron perfectly when pressed).

7. Don't lift it to peek for at least a two minutes after closing it. Cook until the waffle is golden, then immediately transfer the waffle to the baking sheet in the oven. Continue cooking them and placing them on the baking sheet in the oven as they're done, making sure to keep them in one layer and not letting them touch each other to ensure optimum crispness.

8. Once all the waffles are made, serve them alongside the maple and mascarpone.

I did a bit of waffle-research, since I’m a crisp waffle fan and wanted to find out how to keep them nice and crispy on the outside while staying soft and airy on the inside. To me, there’s nothing more depressing at breakfast than a soft, sad, and deflated waffle. I need to be able to hear a little ‘crunch’ when I smash it with the side of my fork. Maybe that’s just my nostalgia for the Eggo-rich breakfasts of my childhood, but that’s where I stand. According to the consensus of the internet, as verified by my recipe testing, there’s three key components to the crisp waffle. The first is a generous bit of cornstarch. This recipe calls for 1/2 cup of corn starch and 1 and 1/2 cups of flour, to put the ratio in perspective. The second is beating the egg white separately until they hold soft peaks (this is the most well-known waffle ‘trick’ out there). And the third one is pretty simple. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit with a two baking sheets on two racks inside of it before you start making the waffles. As you take each waffle off the waffle iron, pop it on the baking sheet in the oven, keeping them all in a single layer. They’ll stay crisp as you finish cooking the other ones, whereas otherwise they’d start to soften just sitting there in a stack as you finish cooking up the rest of the batter.

As for where the plum part of the plum waffles comes in has to do all with the flavor, not with the crispness. I recently came across 8 pounds of plums from one of Jeremy’s co-workers, and have been trying to use them in any/all possible ways (turns out stewed plums make a great homemade bbq sauce addition!), so pureeing them into waffle batter to make plum waffles sounded like a good idea. It doesn’t have to be plum waffles though, you could really use any fruit you have on hand as long as it’s the same weight quantity listed in the recipe (3 ounces). The key is pureeing it with the other liquid ingredients, and then adding that mixture to the dry ingredients. You don’t want to puree the fruit into the finished batter with the dry ingredients already incorporated, as that can do some weird things to the gluten bonds in the flour. If you follow all those steps, you’ll end up with some super moist, perfectly crispy, and wonderfully airy waffles. You won’t need to look for another waffle recipe again, I promise!