To Belgian Waffle

I have a history of preferring turkey sandwiches and cold pasta for breakfast.  Savory reigns in the morning.  And I lived a number of years quite content with this, until one day I came face to face with a certain waffle. 

The Belgian.

The kind of waffle which wears a crisp outer jacket covering its delicate, chewy insides.  Possessing crunchy burnt caramel pockets.  And tasting ever so slightly of pretzel.

It borrows the satisfying crack of a crème brûlée and the chew from a fresh yeast roll.  All the while never forgetting it’s a waffle.  And reminding that Belgians don’t have to be slapped with whipped cream to be fun.

I’ve started to refer to the action of cooking them as “to waffle.”  To Belgian waffle.  As it ensures both breakfast and merriment occur.

To waffle an actual waffler is needed.  And some yeast.  And pearl sugar, which can be a bit persnickety to procure.  Plus the restraint to wait overnight.

But to waffle is worth it.  And the goods needed to do so can be ordered online.  Breakfast will be filled with flour and joy and debatably unnecessary verbiage forevermore. 

The Belgian Waffle

Adapted from Sweet Amandine by way of Formaggio Kitchen

Ingredients:

2 cups bread flour, divided

1 tsp instant dry yeast

¼ cup whole milk, room temperature

1 egg, room temperature

1 tbsp plus 1 tsp dark brown sugar

¾ tsp kosher salt

1 tbsp honey

2 tsp vanilla extract

½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature

½ cup pearl sugar

Instructions:

The night before:

In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk together 2/3 cup of bread flour and the yeast.  In a separate small bowl, mix together the milk, egg, and 2 tbsp plus 2 tsp lukewarm water; add to the yeast mixture and stir to moisten.  Sprinkle the remaining 1-1/3 cups of bread flour over the top, but do not mix it in.  Cover and let sit for 60 to 90 minutes, until the batter just starts to bubble up at the edges of the bowl.

To the batter, add in the brown sugar and salt and (with the paddle attachment) mix on low until just combined.  With the machine on low, add in the honey and vanilla, and then the butter 2 tbsp at a time. When the butter is incorporated and the mixture has come together, switch to a dough hook and mix on medium-low, stopping to scrape down the sides occasionally.  This will take 4 or 5 minutes.  It is done when the dough stretches, rather than breaks.

Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge overnight.

The day of:

About 2 to 3 hours before you want to eat waffles, take out the dough.  Let it rest a few minutes, until it becomes just a little pliable; then use your hands to mix in the pearl sugar. Separate the dough into 6 equal pieces and place on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.  Cover loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rise.  (The directions say this takes 1-1/2 hours, but I’ve found it takes closer to 2 to 2-1/2 hours in my house.  It might be a little colder here.  To speed up the process, place the sheet on top of a warm stove.) 

When the dough is puffed up and soft and pillowy (see here), you are ready.  Heat a stovetop waffle iron (aka the waffler), greased lightly with canola oil, on medium low for a few minutes (about 3) and then flip it and heat the other side for another minute or 2 more.  (Have a regular iron?  See here.)  Add one dough ball to the center of the iron, close the iron, and cook for about a minute. 

Take a peak inside, the waffle should have started to brown and should not stick to the iron.  Flip the iron and continue to cook until the waffle is sufficiently golden and crispy.  (Flip the pan again, if the other side needs more color.)  If the waffles are browning too quickly, turn down the heat.  The entire process should only take a few minutes.

Repeat with remaining dough balls.  (You can keep the cooked waffles warm in a 200-degree oven until all are finished.)

Makes 6 waffles

Notes:

-If you are in the market for a waffler, they are much cheaper on Amazon.

-I’ve successfully made this recipe with active dry yeast, too.  You’ll need 1-1/3 tsp and you’ll have to bloom the yeast about 10 minutes in whole milk (same amount as listed) that has been heated to about 100 degrees.  In this case, you’ll mix the bloomed yeast with the water and egg mixture before adding it to the 2/3 cup of flour.

-You can freeze the waffles whole and warm them again in an oven, though admittedly they lose some of their chewiness the second time around.

- I like these guys with a little butter and maple syrup (though they don’t really need it).  I’ve also enjoyed them with a thick, heavily reduced apple cider. Bacon would likely be a welcome addition here too.

-Weight equivalents are available here.

Baked Blueberry Oatmeal, I Know a Guy

I have a blueberry guy.  I have a stone fruit guy and a bean and beet and bacon guy too.  I hang loose when it comes to sugar snap peas, because, really, it’s hard to find a snap pea that will do you wrong. But about this blueberry guy.

He has the sweetest, most summery blueberries at the farmers’ market.  It’s hard to find a bad berry in July—I understand that—but his stand has had the best ones three years running; he’s yet to burn me.  He tries desperately to hawk beans and tomatoes while forking over his pints (I wouldn’t know how the vegetables are, I already have guys for those).  But his berries are where it’s at.

My boyfriend has even commented on them.  Which is really saying something, because Dave gives out compliments like they’re ration stamps.  Like it’s wartime.  Like he’s about to run out.

Well, these blueberries got one.

Now, this next step may not surprise you.  I am certainly not the first one to mention baked oatmeal.  It’s a recipe from Heidi Swanson’s cookbook, Super Natural Every Day.  Molly posted about it in March.  And then Jess posted about her version, made with apricots, just last week. Heck, there could be women all over the country having come-to-Jesus-moments with this oatmeal, for all I know.

I do understand that not everyone loves oatmeal.  But this is a berried whole grain breakfast you can slice, which should help anyone who’s written off oatmeal because of textural issues. The nuts add a rich, buttery note (as does some actual butter that gets melted in, as well).   It’s also sweet—but not too sweet—and good eaten both cold and warm.

It’s the kind of dish that you could use as a dumping ground for all sorts of stray seeds, nuts, and summer fruits.  Most recently, I’ve been entertaining a plum and hazelnut version.  I will keep you posted. But—in the meantime—nearly everyone loves blueberries.  So I suggest you give it a whirl.

Also—it should be noted—while Dave didn’t say anything, there were two fairly large pieces of oatmeal missing the day after I baked it.

Sometimes, he’s a man of few words.  But, hot damn, the guy knows food.  And his fork speaks volumes.

Baked Blueberry Oatmeal

Adapted from Super Natural Every Day, by Heidi Swanson by way of Orangette

Ingredients:

2 cups oats

½ cup choice nuts, or seeds (I used pumpkin seeds and hazelnuts), toasted

1 tsp baking powder

1½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp kosher salt

1½ cups blueberries

2 cups whole milk

1/3 cup maple syrup

1 egg, beaten

1½ tbsp unsalted butter, melted

2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

Set the oven at 375 degrees. In an 8 x 8 or 10 x 7 inch casserole dish, mix together the oats, nuts, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.

Scatter the blueberries evenly over the oats mixture.  In a medium bowl, combine the milk, syrup, egg, butter, and vanilla extract.  Pour the liquid over the oats; be sure it fully seeps down into the oats (you may need to use a spoon to help coax it).

Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, until the top is golden and the oats are set.  Allow to cool slightly before serving.

Makes about 6 servings

Notes:

-You can use fresh or frozen blueberries (no need to thaw, the frozen ones might increase the baking time a bit).  (These berries come from the City Hall farmers' market.  Stand #3.)

-This is good warm, perhaps with another drizzle of maple syrup, but my favorite way to eat it is cold, with a fork, or out of hand if no one is watching. (Please note the recipe—as dictated by the ladies—has another 1½ tablespoon of butter drizzled on top.  I can’t argue with that, either.)

-I like to give Dave a hard time, but he’s really pretty lovely. 

Early Plum Frozen Yogurt, This is Just to Say

One of my favorite poems is by William Carlos Williams.  It’s about plums (!).  But it’s also about apologizing without actually apologizing.  It’s about seduction.  And it's called "This is Just to Say."

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

A role the plum was born to play.  I only wish prunes could get that level of respect.  Prunes get nose wrinkling and Senokot^®.  I hate that.  And—while we’re at it—the rebranding of prunes as “dried plums” a few years back was really offensive.  Makes me feel like a stone fruit evangelist.  (It’s also what inspired the title of this very blog.)

Anyway, these stains have only deepened my love.  I am a champion for plums.  Even the wrinkly ones.

They possess a poetic balance of sweetness and acid, delivered in an array of shades and shapes. Which makes them perfect for dessert.  Take Ina Garten’s plum tart.  It partners with rosemary or thyme like a dream.  It’s easy and delivers, every time.  I still have my sights set on Jess’s yeasted plum cake, too.  And if you are looking to stray in a savory direction, I strongly suggest the caramel duck fat potatoes with prunes, from Jerusalem.  It operates on another plane altogether.  A crispy, salty, sweet one.

But now, ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to introduce early plum frozen yogurt.

It pushes all the buttons you want a summer dessert to push.  It's refreshing, freckled with vanilla beans, layered with tart plum bits, and delicately sweetened.  I used deep purple plums with canary yellow flesh, which birthed a ballet slipper-colored base dissected with bright pink fleshy swirls.

You could call it an imitation of the actual fruit, whose sweet skin plus tart pulp offers much more than its separated parts.  The yogurt rejoins these parts with its plum ribbon running through it. It also has that gutsy chew that is so wonderfully characteristic of Jeni’s Splendid recipes.

All this just to say the yogurt was delicious.  So sweet.  And so cold.

Early Plum Frozen Yogurt

Inspired by Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home, by Jeni Britton Bauer

Ingredients:

for the frozen yogurt base

1 quart plain low fat yogurt

1½ cups whole milk

2 tbsp cornstarch

2 ounces (4 tbsp) cream cheese, softened

½ cup heavy cream

2/3 cup sugar

¼ cup light corn syrup

1 vanilla bean pod, split, seeds and pod reserved

for the plum swirl and plum syrup

2 limes, 1 zested and both juiced

4 black plums, each sliced into 6 wedges

1/3 cup demerara sugar

pinch of salt

splash of rosewater

Instructions:

Day 1:

Over a large bowl, fit a sieve or colander double-lined with cheesecloth.  Pour yogurt into the lined bowl to drain; cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight (6 to 8 hours).

In a medium saucepan, place lime juice, zest, plums, demerara sugar, and pinch of salt and heat on medium, stirring occasionally, and gently. 

Once the plums’ skins start to separate from the flesh, remove enough slices from pan to make 1 heaping cup and place in a small bowl.  (The plums should be slightly softened, but not falling apart; it is okay to do this a few pieces at a time, as not all the plums will lose their skins at once. The plums yellow flesh should turn bright pink from being cooked with their skins.)

Cook the remaining plums and their liquid down until thick (about 20 minutes); using a small sieve, strain out the skins, pressing down to extract all the juice.  You should have just over ½ cup plum liquid; add in the rosewater.  Place in a small container.  Cover and refrigerate both the plum halves and plum liquid.

Day 2:

Discard the liquid from the strained yogurt; measure out 1¼ cups of yogurt and set aside. (Use the small amount of leftover yogurt for another use.)  In a small bowl, whisk 3 tbsp of the milk with the cornstarch to make a slurry.  Whisk the cream cheese in a separate small bowl until smooth.  In a medium saucepan, combine the remaining milk, cream, sugar, corn syrup, and vanilla bean (pod and seeds) over medium heat; boil 4 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent scorching.

Remove the milk mixture from the heat, discard the vanilla bean pod, whisk in the cornstarch slurry, and return the liquid to medium heat until it thickens slightly, about a minute or two.  Whisk a little of the hot mixture into the cream cheese, enough so that it becomes smooth, then whisk into the saucepan with the remaining milk.  Remove from heat; whisk in the yogurt and reserved plum liquid. 

Set a medium-sized metal bowl over a larger bowl filled with ice.  Set a strainer on top and pour the liquid through to remove any unseemly bits.  Let cool; cover and refrigerate the base overnight.

Day 3:

Churn the base in a frozen ice cream canister for 20 to 25 minutes, until the base pulls away from the sides of the canister, forming ribbons.  While the yogurt is churning, cut up the reserved plum halves into bite-sized pieces.  Spoon a little of the base into a freezer safe-container and then layer with plum bits; repeat layering until both the plums and base are all used up, ending with the base. 

Place a piece of parchment paper, cut to fit the container, over the top of the yogurt; seal and freeze at least 4 hours before serving.

Makes about a quart

Notes:

-This is a hard frozen yogurt; you’ll want to take it out a few minutes to soften before scooping.

-I suspect if you use plums with dark flesh, the result will be a darker shade.  

-We are a tad premature for plum season right now in Massachusetts.  I had very good luck with some local supermarket fruit.  I think nectarines would be lovely here too.

-I can never get my act together enough to let the cream cheese soften ahead of time, so I usually stick it in the microwave for a few seconds.  It does wonders.

A Kilo Plus Vanilla Bean Pound Cake with Rosé Glaze

I came back from France up a solid kilo, newly equip with a little more padding around my middle region and a liver that just wouldn’t quit.  Nice and all, but I felt in need of a detox. 

When I throw around a term like “detox” what I really mean is that I try to avoid drinking for a solid six days, try to eat more plants, and try not to sneak cookies at lunch.  Some of you may know this as “moderation.”  I lasted until Thursday. 

By Friday I was making a cake that contained three sticks of butter, lavishly glazed in rosé syrup.  Shoes don’t stretch.  Men don’t change.  And I don’t detox very well.  You can take these things as fact, friends. At least for as long as there are women who love dessert and pink-hued wine and who can talk themselves into buying ill-fitting shoes and the words of men they attract.

But I’m veering off course here. I need to keep this short and sweet because I have lunges to do. The inspiration for this cake came from Provence and from a recent recipe by Jess of Sweet Amandine.  She makes the cake without the syrup here, inspired by Hi-Rise.

While touring a winery in Provence, I came across some crisp, buttery cookies made with vanilla and a little rosé, biscuits vanillé aromatise au vin rosé de Provence if we are being fancy.  I wanted an excuse to use my new loaf pans.  I also wanted an excuse to bake this pound cake Jess spoke of and open a bottle of wine I lugged back from Provence.  You know where I’m going with this.

The biscuits I bought were delicate, barely sweet with just a faint hint of rosé.  There is nothing delicate about this cake.  It’s pound cake. 

It calls for eight eggs.  It uses four cups of sugar.  There is no moderate use of butter.  No moderate use of its sticky wine glaze.  And certainly no moderate use of vanilla beans, either.

It’s everything a real pound cake should be.  It’s dense, like a glazed donut in loaf form.  Cut in thick slabs and served with tart berries it’s pure summer.  And it’s delicious with a glass of rose, also pure summer.

So I’m off to lunge, stretch, and then take my middle section for a jog.  And afterwards, well, we’re probably going to eat some wine cake.

Vanilla Bean Pound Cake with Rosé Glaze 
Adapted from Sweet Amandine (and a few other places)

Ingredients:

For the cake

3 cups all-purpose flour

1½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp kosher salt

1½ cups butter, room temperature (plus extra for buttering your pans)

2½ cups vanilla sugar (see note)

1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped out (save the pod)

1 tbsp vanilla extract

8 large eggs, room temperature 
sprinkling of fleur de sel (optional)

For the glaze

1½ cups sugar

1 cup rosé wine

1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped (plus the pod from above)

splash of orange blossom water

pinch of kosher salt 

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Butter two-9 inch cake pans (or alternatively, loaf pans; I used 3 of varying size).  If using loaf pans, fit parchment paper inside your buttered pan, letting the sides of the paper hang out; butter the paper too.  

Sift the flour and baking powder together into a medium bowl.  Add in the salt; set aside.

Cream the butter and vanilla sugar until light white and fluffy in a stand mixer.  Add the vanilla bean seeds, vanilla extract, and then add the eggs one by one with the mixer on low speed.  Increase the speed and beat until well combined.

Add the flour mixture to the creamed butter and sugar, a little bit at a time, until just combined. Scrap down the batter from the sides of the bowl and fold the batter a few times to make sure everything is well mixed; do not over mix.  Divide the batter between your cake pans (or among your loaf pans).  Bake 30 minutes and then rotate the pans and bake for another 15-30 minutes, depending on the size of your pans.  (The loaf pans took a total of 65 minutes.)  The cakes are done when a toothpick or cake tester comes out clean.

While the cakes are baking, make the syrup.  Combine the 1½ cups sugar with the rosé wine; add the vanilla bean seeds, split vanilla bean pod, plus the additional reserved pod.  Heat on medium, stirring occasionally until the sugar is dissolved.  Add in the orange blossom water and pinch of salt.

When the cakes are finished let them cool on a wire rack for 15-20 minutes (or until the pans are cool enough to touch).  Gently remove the cake from the pans (if you are using the loaf pans with parchment paper this will be very, very easy; just loosen the ends and tug at the parchment paper sides.  (Then remove the parchment paper.)

Brush the syrup over the top and sides of the cake.  You’ll want to do this a few times, about every 10 minutes or so.  (I ended up having about ¼ cup of syrup left.)  Sprinkle the top of the cake with a little fleur de sel, if desired. Let the cake fully cool and then serve, cover, or freeze.

Makes two-nine inch cakes or 3-4 small loafs

Notes:

-To make vanilla sugar just stick a few pods of vanilla, after you’ve used the seeds for something else, into a jar of sugar and let it hang for at least a few days.

- This recipe is a great use of leftover rosé, as it only requires one cup (a moderate amount).  This amount also dictates that one cannot drink an entire bottle.  (Unless, of course, there is another bottle.)

-This is a sweet cake.  Serve it with some fresh berries or a perky sorbet.