Waffling About Diets

Weren't we on a diet?  I think we were.  And although it's slow going here on my side of the computer, the days trudge onward.  Why haven't I posted any delicious and healthful discoveries to my faithful readers, you ask suspiciously?  Well, I have two reasons:  I haven't been able to take any decent pictures because I'm so freakin' hungry by dinner, I don't have the patience to fiddle around with all the maneuvering of lights and plates and food (getting cold!) that's involved in producing a pretty picture. And secondly, I'm lazy.  I just can't get excited by food when it's a chore and I certainly don't feel much like writing about it.  I've been told to banish the word "diet" from my vocabulary and focus on healthful eating, but that word just won't lie down and die.  If I can't eat it, I'm on a diet, damnit. And I hate self-deprivation.

I can get excited by waffles, and I can have one delicious waffle if I want one (augmented by a couple of pieces of not-so-bad Applegate Farms turkey bacon).   So, in order to maximize my sensible restraint, I naturally gravitate towards Marion Cunningham's Raised Waffles from her latest cookbook, Lost Recipes (click here to read my review of her book in Style last year). 

These waffles are famous for a very good reason (not only do they appear in Lost Recipes, but also  Cunningham's The Breakfast Book, Cooking With Children, Rose Levy Beranbaum's Cake Bible, and Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything)--they redefine wafflehood and make all other waffles tremble and cast their eyes down in shame at the merest whiff of their yeasty aroma.  Delicately crunchy on the outside, inside these waffles you'll find a surprisingly creamy, almost custard-like interior that drinks a maple syrup bottle dry and still manages to maintain its sweet eggy-bready integrity. Plan ahead and mix up the batter tonight because it needs to rise and fall in solitary, civilized splendor and that, my friends, is the real secret to morning paradise.

Recipe after the jump . . .

Marion Cunningham's Famous Raised Waffles

Makes about 8

1/2 cup warm water
1 package dry yeast
2 cups milk, warmed
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Choose a large mixing bowl because the batter will double in bulk as it rises. Put the water in the mixing bowl and sprinkle in the yeast. Let stand to dissolve for 5 minutes. Whisk in the milk, butter, salt, sugar and flour and beat until smooth. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let stand overnight.

Preheat the waffle iron. Just before cooking the waffles, beat the eggs and baking soda into the batter. (The batter will be thin.) Pour 1⁄2 to 3⁄4 cup batter into the waffle iron. Bake until waffles are crisp and golden brown. Extra batter will keep for several days in the refrigerator.

Comments

[veron]

I know what you mean about diets you can't just get excited with diet food. I was on one for two weeks and then come weekend cooking time ,I inflate back to where I was. How can one weekend do that it just is not fair.

[Tripp Fenderson]

Extra batter? We know nothing of the sort in our house. There's never any left. ;)

Mmm. Now I'm hungry. Maybe we'll have waffles for dinner...

[John]

I stumbled across an old comment on someone else's website and am still scratching my head trying to remember if/when/why I gave you tickets to see Spalding Gray...

[s'kat]

I think this post may just yet convince me to go out and buy a waffle iron!

[surfdreams]

Sounds great for the Vermont Maple Syrup I recently bought back East (i'm in California). The instructions say to "let stand overnight". Is that at room temperature or in the fridge???

[Brandon]

That would be room temp, surfer dude, I mean surferdreams. I wish I were in California right about now.