Homemade Waffles

My oldest, Allie has always LOVED waffles. She eats them straight out of the toaster... no syrup or anything. They make for fast easy breakfasts on those mornings that we have to get out the door quickly or quick snacks when she gets home from school. We normally buy the frozen ones (usually store brand) but the other day we ran out. So with good intentions and excitement about my new adventure I pulled out the waffle iron and set to work. Here's what followed: 

First I signed in to pintrest and typed in "homemade waffles". The first picture that came up looked pretty good so I clicked on it and it brought me to "The finer things in life blog" and this post The Finer Things in Life- Homemade Waffles. The recipe looked pretty simple so my search stopped there. 

These are the ingredients from the box of waffles that were in the freezer... I can't even pronounce some of those ingredients! 

These are the ingredients from the recipe... feel much better about them don't you?

Now I realized that some of those ingredients that I couldn't pronounce were also in the flour and baking powder so to be fair I went through and compared and crossed out the things that were in my ingredients on the label: 

I crossed out sugar on accident because I thought it was part of the chocolate chips and I did not use them in mine... but then I realized that it was on there twice so I circled it. Bonus realization: there was NO sugar in the recipe I was using!

I followed the recipe to a "T"... my only problem was getting the egg whites to form "stiff white peaks"... they never did so I just folded them in peakless. I'm not sure how that would have affected the taste. 

This was the finished product! 

okay okay... this was really the finished product!

Allie was "super-duper" starving and while we don't usually have butter and syrup on our waffles I decided that "homemade waffles" was a special occasion so we both had one like this. (I'm not even going to discuss the nasty things that were in the syrup... I'm making baby steps here and real maple syrup is not as easy to come by here as it is back home.)

First I placed the waffles in paper towels on cookie sheets while they cooled (they were steaming up and getting soggy when I placed them directly on the pans). Then I took the paper towel off and put them in the freezer. I have found with all of my freezer cooking that it is worth the time to freeze things separate and then bag them up and freeze them together.

After a couple hours I bagged them up and popped them back in the freezer. Easy Peasy!

This recipe made 18 waffles for me (it said 20 but I only ended up with 18) minus the two we ate, I ended up with 16 waffles in the freezer... These will probably last Allie about a month.

Here's the cost break down: 

milk: $0.57

butter: $0.82

eggs: $0.29

flour: $0.27

Grand Total: $1.95 for 18 waffles

(I did not include the price of salt or baking powder because it would be very minimal)

Eggo waffles cost $2.00- $2.50 for a box of 10. 

Okay, so I'm not going to get rich quick making waffles in my kitchen. But every little penny counts. And while it did take me some time to do Allie loved helping me with these and when they were on the iron cooking we took advantage of the time we needed to be in the kitchen to get some extra cleaning done (we wiped down all the cabinets). So I accomplished my goal: cut down on preservatives and additives, save money, and have some quality time with my daughter. 

So what will I do different next time?

1) Omit the salt. I used salted butter so I don't really think it was necessary.

2) Cook them a little longer. My iron has a light that goes off when it's done. It apparently has no clue. I cooked them a couple minutes longer and was afraid to burn them. Only a few of them had that nice golden brown look to them, some looked downright not done lol. But when we toast them I'm sure they will darken up.

3) Decrease the butter a bit. Maybe 1/2 cup instead of 2/3rds. 

4) Add things! I used to add pureed fruit and veggies to Allie's pancakes to hide them... I think I'll use that trick again next time. Apple-cinnamon, strawberry, blueberry for fruits. Sweet potato and carrot for veggies (sounds gross I know but sometimes you gotta hide them wherever you can and they actually taste pretty good!)