Real pancakes, from a box

That's what she said.  And she meant it...without irony.

I suppose the phrase wouldn't have struck me if she and her troupe hadn't just spent the previous so many minutes trying to convince the rest of us that they were so much more advanced than us in every way: general sophistication, professional knowledge and the almighty and indisputable measurement of Twitter followers.  One even made a veiled comment on those of us sipping cups from a nearby coffee shop by calling a disaster when her ceramic travel mug from her favourite ubiquitous overpriced coffee house tumbled and smashed upon landing on the icy pavement.  Yeah, you know the type.

It's amazing how one little phrase, not intended to be heard by anyone other than the two who accompanied her, can not so much chink an armour, but tear a hole in dollar store tin foil.  No, I didn't buy their earlier assertions of superiority: her phrase simply confirmed my first impressions.

I know there are people who don't cook.  And I know there are people who think heating a frozen dinner and serving it in china serving dishes is counts as cooking, or filling frozen pastry shells with tinned pie filling is scratch baking.  I'm fully that there are those who, because of an accident of wealth, think their opinions are worth more than those who don't have the means to buy top end ingredients or eat at the finest restaurants.

I also know that someone's inability to make pancakes from scratch does not mean s/he is any less capable in areas that really count in life.

But really...these are pancakes.

Flour
Fat
Sugar
Salt
Eggs
Bicarb
Milk

The above is my version...I'm sure there are versions which don't use eggs, milk or other ingredients.  And I'm positive there are versions that add fruit, nuts, spices and other flavours or textures.

It's not as if you need esoteric equipment or source an ingredient that's only available in a remote region half a world away to make nummy nummy pancakes.  Heck, I'd argue using a box mix is probably a guarantee that you won't get nummy nummy pancakes.  Just pancakes.

But it was Pancake Tuesday and I was already in a pancakey-type mood.  Instead of either following Nigella Lawson's recipe or finding my lost recipe for blueberry buttermilk pancakes or even going back to my ricotta pancakes, I decided to trawl the web for something new.

With a small tub of cottage cheese in my fridge (why, I no longer remember), I decided to follow Whole Foods' recipe, but add a splash of vanilla to the batter.

Delicious, creamy and so easy to make.

No box needed.

Recipe: Fluffy Cottage Cheese Pancakes


cheers!
jasmine
 I'm a quill for hire!

Happy New Year: Ricotta Pancakes

Happy New Year!

All the best to you and yours in and I wish you a happy and healthy 2012, filled with good people, amazing adventures and (of course) good food.

And how best to start off a new year than with a good breakfast?

My appreciation of all things breakfasty isn't that much of a secret. Breakfast for supper is a regular occurrence, meeting friends (old and new) over brunch (which is just fancy breakfast) is my preferred meal, and what I look forward to most--when visiting Ireland and the UK--is a good full Irish/English breakfast.

Even though I usually make blueberry pancakes or plain buttermilk pancakes, I decided to play with some leftover ricotta in my fridge and try to make ricotta pancakes.

After looking at a number of recipes including these, I couldn't quite wrap my head around what made for a good ricotta pancake...thin batter or thick, stiffly beaten whites or whole eggs, even citrus or vanilla was in question.

After a couple of attempts I came up with the following recipe. Its batter is of a wet, dropping consistency, but not so much so. For fluffiness I decided to treat the pancake as I did my favourite waffles and beat the egg whites separately. The partial bowl of clementines on my dining room tilted my flavouring decision (but to tell you the truth, my first version used vanilla (which was fine, but I think citrus zest adds a lovely brightness to the pancakes).

Tender and fluffy pancakes--a nice way to welcome the New Year.

Ricotta Pancakes
Yield: approx 6 quarter plate-sized pancakes or approx 15-20 saucer-sized pancakes

Ingredients
4 eggs, separated
250g (250ml/1c) ricotta cheese
125ml (0.5c) milk
1.5Tbsp (20ml) sugar
1.5Tbsp (20ml) melted butter
1tsp grated orange or lemon zest
90g (185ml/0.66c) all purpose flour
0.5tsp (2.5ml) bicarbonate of soda
0.5tsp (2.5ml) baking powder
pinch salt
Butter or oil for frying

Method
Whip the four egg whites to stiff peaks and set aside.

Sift together the flour, bicarb, baking powder and salt into a jug. In a separate bowl, mix well the two yolks, ricotta, milk, sugar, butter and zest. Stir the wet mixture into the dry, until it has barely combined (it's fine if it's lumpy with dry bits and wet bits).

Fold in the egg whites, in the usual three stage method: stir in well one third of the whites, fold in the next third, with a lighter hand, and then lightly fold in the rest of the whites doing your best to keep the batter as airy as possible.

Drop about a teaspoon or two of fat into a pan and let it become sizzling hot. Pour the batter, by spoon or by ladle, and let cook. When the pancakes start to bubble and spurt little bits of steam like geysers, carefully flip them over to let the second side cook.

Serve with warmed syrup, some honey, yoghurt or citrus curd.


cheers!

jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!

Dessert for Breakfast: Breakfast Berry Crisp

The difference a week makes.

The sun shone last Sunday, the temps were within spitting distance of 20C and the plants in my little front garden were poking through the soil.

Today's clouds block the sun, the mercury barely touches the freezing point and I can almost see little green shoots for the lightest dusting of snow.

Welcome to spring in southwestern Ontario.

A week ago I was bouncing about the place, filled with energy, tackling a number of housey projects I've either put off or have been too busy to tend to.

Today I'm bundled in blankets with a cold little nose and a voice that can't decide if it really should be with Marcel Marceau or Bonnie Tyler: when it exists, it's as raspy as if I've lived a life deserving of whisky and cigarettes.

Last week I wanted a barely sweet crisp. This week I still want a crisp, but I want something on the syrupier side of things. I want to remind myself that summer will arrive with punnets of berries, bursting with colour and sweet juices.

We're not quite in the nadir of local berries, but we may as well be. In a few weeks (okay a few months) I'll be at Herrle's, deciding which containers of fruit will be mine. But now, I'm at the bigscarymegamart, poking through transparent clamshells of underripe, trucked fruit more reminiscent of vinegar than of honey.

Many mornings I breakfast on some combination of yoghurt, fruit and granola. Today when I stood before my fridge's cavernous belly I had a difficult choice to make: use the fruit for breakfast or for a crisp.

Then I asked myself: why choose?

Many crisps are simply fruit stewed under an oatmeal crust. A main ingredient of my homemade granola is rolled oats. Why not top my crisp with unbaked granola?

Why not have this granola-topped crisp for breakfast, with a dollop of yoghurt and a drizzle of honey?

Given the pancakes for supper precedent many of us enjoy, why not? More to the point...given how many people have thinly disguised cakes as muffins for breakfast, why not granola-topped stewed fruit for breakfast?

The result? Well, I'd eat it for breakfast and dessert.

Breakfast Berry Crisp
Serves 6-8

Ingredients
for the fruit:
600g (1L/4c) mixed berries
50g (0.25c) brown sugar (or more, depending upon how sweet the fruit is)
2dspn (1.5Tbsp) cornflour (cornstarch)
the juice of one orange

For the topping:
60g (0.5c) rolled oats
40g (0.3c) sweet desiccated coconut
20g (2Tbsp) pumpkin seeds
20g (2Tbsp) sunflower seeds
20g (2Tbsp) sliced almonds
25g (2Tbsp) brown sugar
pinch of salt
pinch of nutmeg
0.5tsp cinnamon
0.25tsp ground ginger
3Tbsp maple syrup
2Tbsp soft butter
0.5tsp vanilla
yoghurt and honey for serving

Method
Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Butter a 2.5L (11c) baking dish.

Mix fruit with 50g brown sugar, cornflour and orange juice. Tip into the prepared baking dish.

Mix the topping ingredients together, rubbing in the butter, to make a nubbly, rubbly topping. Strew onto the fruit.

Bake for 35-45 minutes, or until the fruit blurbles and boils and the the topping has turned a golden brown.

Serve warm or cold with yoghurt and honey (or sweetened whipped cream or ice cream).


cheers!

jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!

Corned beef Hash

Even though I was careful to not have a whopping huge hunk of corned beef, I had more than enough for a couple of suppers and sandwiches.

The most obvious solution to my embarrassment of cured beef riches was, as you've probably guessed by this post's title, corned beef hash.

Then again, I may have embarked on a 14-day brining adventure just to make this crisped potatoey-beefy-oniony conglomeration.

Like so many foods created to use up an odd bit of this or that, this, again, is a non-recipe recipe. I don't think there's a hard and fast rule about corned beef hash: chopped up left over boiled potatoes, chopped up left over corned beef, mixed with chopped onion, garlic and spices, fried, an served warm for breakfast lunch or supper.

Browned hashed potatoes with bits of spiced cured beef, topped with a soft boiled or runny poached egg, with butter toast to sop up the golden goo...what more does one want for a lazy Sunday breakfast, or a midnight nosh when back from a night out sampling the local pub's liquid offerings? Not much, I think.

Corned Beef Hash
Serves 2-4

Ingredients
Butter and or olive oil, for frying
1 onion, finely diced
1 garlic clove, minced
250g (1.5c) boiled potatoes, finely chopped
100g (1c) corned beef, finely chopped
salt
pepper
0.5tsp mustard powder
1tsp vinegar



Method
Heat fat in a cast iron pan until quite hot. Saute onions until transluscent. Add garlic and stir until its scent is released.

Tumble in chopped potatoes and meat, a pinch of salt, two of pepper and the mustard powder. Sprinkle with vinegar and stir well and press into an even layer in the pan.

Fry until the bottom is crisp and golden. Turn, in sections, to crisp the other side. If it sticks, add more fat to the pan. Fry and turn again (or as often as needed) until the potatoes and meat are lovely and crispy.

Dollop some sour cream along the side and garnish with chopped chives or spring onions.

Serve with eggs (soft boiled, poached, fried, or whichever way you wish), baked beans, fried tomatoes and or fried mushrooms.

cheers!

jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!

As flat as a pancake

No. I haven't lost that much weight....I think I'd have to be a negative weight to be considered "as flat as a pancake."

No...today's post is about the unfairness of summer.

You read correctly. The unfairness of summer.

No--I'm not going to wax lyrically about being a grown up who will spend almost every weekday between now and the autumn inside, at my desk, cursing a blue streak at a computer screen because the muse has left me, in favour of a patio, a pina colada and a lovely waiter named (well, does it really matter...).

No...I'm talking about ironing.

In the dead of winter, when the kitchen is warm with baking and roasting, my wardrobe choice is pretty easy: jeans and a rumply sweater. It's easy. It's warm. It's low maintenance.

Fast forward a few months when grass carpets the ground and mosquitos queue up to snack on my various parts and it's quite a different story. The oven sprouts cobwebs and the fridge is filled with leafy greens and purple and red berries. I don't want to think of anything heat-born. My wardrobe choice, while just as obvious as in the cold months is nowhere near as low maintenance: light and crisp cotton.

Cotton needs ironing, so every so many days I'm behind a folding board: a spray bottle filled with lavender water in one hand, a searing hot iron in the other and the most pathetic, put upon expression on my face.

I know I could forego pressing my clothes and go for the easy, breezy carefree look. But really. Who really wants to go around looking like a 5'1" wadded up Kleenex?

I suppose I could just look for no-iron synthetics...but I remember the the synthetics of the 1970s...and all I have to say is "Ew. Gross." And yes...many things from the 1970s elicit that reaction: leisure suits, powder blue eyeshadow, Paul Anka's song "Having My Baby"...

Note to marketers of new polysynthetic fibres: Please don't email me or leave comments telling me how wonderful the new generation of fake fibres are. I'm really not interested...and besides, I won't publish your comments.

In a few weeks, when I curse my hot weather laundry ritual, waiting for the day someone invents 100 per cent cotton clothes that miraculously stay freshly pressed, I'll also be looking for relatively effortless ways of feeding myself.

Even though salads and sandwiches are fine, often I need something a bit more sustaining, but nearly as effortless ways of feeding myself. I've written about my preference for breakfast for supper previously. Even though a good waffle is a thing of beauty, sometimes beauty takes too long.

At times like that, I don't have to sacrifice satsifaction for speed. Nigella Express has an incredibly instant pancake mix recipe that produces delicious pancake at pretty much the drop of a hat. All I have to do is keep a supply of the mix on hand.

When a pancake craving hits, all I need to do is scoop out a cup of the mix, and combine it with a cup of milk, a tablespoon of melted butter and an egg, and drop two or three tablespoonfuls onto a hot, buttered pan et voilà! The flapjacks, although not flat, are fluffy and so gosh-darned tasty, especially when served butter and maple syrup. The Divine Ms Lawson has made her recipe available here.

I think, if you're the type to make your pancakes from a boxed mix, once you try these, you won't go back.


cheers!
jasmine


What I'm reading: The Children's Book by A.S Byatt

I'm a quill for hire!

Banana Oat Muffins

I'm trying to decide if my recent migration towards heartier muffins--ones imbued with whole grains and other nubbly bits, from sorry excuses for eating cake for breakfast, signals something significant or is just my body's natural attempt at rebalancing itself from sugarfest that marks each and every December.

Don't get me wrong, I think into every life more than a little cake for breakfast must fall. Same with cheeziepoofs for supper: sometimes all you need for a full meal is something you'd normally reserve for a once in a while treat. Perhaps it's my embodiment of the great Julia Child's belief of everything in moderation, including moderation.

My problem with oatmealy muffins is their inextricable association with old people and "regularity." The same sort of regularity that comes from prunes and castor oil. (Okay. I do love prunes...but not for that reason. I think they are just like candy.) Then there's the McHealthiness associated with nutrionism and the bandwagon jumpers who drone on and on about whole grain this and oaty that.

These muffins were born from a burden of a couple of mushy bananas and utter boredom with my usual banana bread (which does get turned into muffins from time to time). Yes, I could jazz things up by switching the fruit, adding nuts or introducing chocolate, but no. I wanted something different, something with a bit more oomphy-heartiness to it. Hearty--but not leaden--they are. Oomphy...not so much. But that's okay.



Banana Oat Muffins
Yield 6 ginomous muffins or 12 regular ones

130g ap flour
65g whole wheat flour
0.5t cinnamon
1 dspn baking powder
0.5t bicarbonate of soda
0.25t salt
90g sugar
2 mashed bananas (roughly 250ml)
60ml vegetable oil
1t vanilla extract
80ml buttermilk
2 eggs, beaten
50g rolled oats

Preheat oven to 170C/350F. Line or grease a 6-bun muffin tray with papers. You're looking at the ginormous muffin-sized tray, not the sane muffin-sized ones. If you want sane-sized ones, grab and grease or paper as 12-bun muffin tray.

Stir together flours, baking powder, bicarb and cinnamon.

Combine bananas, salt, sugar, oil, vanilla, buttermilk and eggs.

Stir the dry mixture into the wet until just combined, then fold in the oats.

Dollop into the prepared muffin trays. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

cheers!
jasmine

All work and no play...

...is not the way to live any life...really.

All that pent-up play was bound to burst out in some way. No: not in the kitchen. Sorry. No recipe today. Yes: I know I've not posted anything foodish in a little bit. But, as my regular readers know, sometimes real life takes over and I just don't have the opportunity to cook or post.

My lost-for-far-too-long play unleashed itself at last night's Toronto Duran Duran concert in Toronto. Yes, I'm a fan. Yes, they're still touring (minus Andy Taylor). Yes, we (that's Cathy, the music trivia queen in with me--taking the picture was her friend Amy) had a great time, lost our voices and danced for hours. Oh...and the songs from Red Carpet Massacre are much better live than the recording. Just in case anyone was wondering.

Whenever I'm in Toronto and can manage to get my schedule to match up with our favourite Cream Puff's, we share a meal or two. Luckily enough this morning we were able to meet up at my favourite breakfasty-brunchy place in The Big Smoke.

Even though we always have a great time together--she's such a lovely, witty, intelligent and compassionate soul--I must admit I was brave to ask her for an early-ish breakfast after a night out...not necessarily at my best after being out 'til late and gossiping until later. There's a reason there's no morning-after photo of me. Want an idea? Scramble the curls, add a bleary-look of pained concentration along with three times the make-up from the concert photo...

She had pancakes and sausage, and I had quite possibly the best morning after the night before breakfast I could hope for--a full English (toasted malted bread, potatoes, fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms and poached eggs). Well-fed and happy we parted, each to our own offices.

All I know is that I need to play more often...

cheers!
jasmine

Milk Calendar Mondays: Sensational Smoothies

For those of you who've followed my little Milk Calendar experiment, you know that I don't think very highly of many of the recipes I've tried thus far. What started off as a bit of curiosity, a bit of fun and a bit of a yen for easy and tasty recipes more often than not ends up a bit of disappointment, a bit of frustration and a yen for the fast food mall up the street.

Last month's recipe was bad..badbadbadbadbad. The one before set off my snark-o-meter. The one before that was good-okay. To save pixel space, let's just agree to say that that's a good summation of all the recipes thus far.

So I hope you understand when I admit to being a bit...ummm...trepidacious when I try the next calendar recipe. And you won't be overly surprised when that trepidation turns to paranoia when the recipe works, is somewhat tasty and makes me almost happy that I tried it.

July's sensational smoothies were already in my bad books for using "sensational" in the title. Basically, I thought the milk people were trying too hard to sell me on the concept--shades of the travesty that was "Faster-than-take-out chicken and veggie chow mein." Maybe it was a self-preservation thing, but I decided to try two of the three offered recipes--blueberry-banana-orange and pomegranate sunrise I opted out of the raspberry lemon. But allow me to put on record here that I think "pomegranate sunrise" is a nauseating title, reminiscent of some 1970s disco-crazed lippy colour.

Okay...they weren't "sensational" by my rather middling standards, but they were sensational by the calendar's.

The blueberry smoothie was quite pretty with its bubbly mauve top, and while the pomegranate one was not as pristinely delineated as in the calendar's picture, was still quite attractive.

Both smoothies were very quick, tasty and surprisingly hunger-ending. Who'd have thunk recipes when in their original and untampered states would hold their own?

So here's where my innate paraonoia kicks in...

Is this the token "hey, it works and I might want to have it again" recipe? Or is this just the beginning of a better half of the calendar to lull you into looking forward to the next calendar? You know...enough good recipes at the end to make you forget about the bad stuff that happened in the first half, so by the time the next calendar comes tucked between sales flyers for all those things the shops over-ordered and are trying to convince you that your Great Auntie Ermintrude would love for Christmas, forget how...unappetising the recipes were in the first half of the year.

I don't know but we've got the balance of 2008 to find out.


cheers!
jasmine

Milk Calendar Mondays: Cinnamon Crunch Raspberry Muffins

For those of you who flipped your Milk Calendar to April and wondered about my adventure with Salmon and Rice Primavera, well, you'll just have to keep on wondering. Or you can do the recipe and assume that whatever you thought of it will be exactly my reaction. I didn't attempt the recipe because of a salmon allergy (how wrong is that?).

So this month's Milk Calendar Monday recipe let me dive into one of the extra eight recipes. I really wonder why they separate these out from the others. I mean, yes, it's always good to give your customers more than they asked for (well, more in a good way... higher prices, unending telephone trees, days of headaches to get a simple thing done are NOT examples of this), but these...um...hidden...recipes always look more interesting and tasty than the monthly spotlights. I'd have been happier if the Easy Jambalaya recipe (yes, I do drone on about that one) was hidden on one the back pages and the recipe I chose instead was on a calendar page.

I must admit, after reading Brilynn's comment about the carrot cake I was more than a little trepedatious about trying the extra recipes. I mean, were these the ones that (in some wise person's mind) weren't good enough to be the monthly pin-up: you know, passively attractive with a good personality? Knowing I had to pick something, I went with the Cinnamon Crunch Raspberry Muffins.

This is a muffin that uses whole wheat flour, which in my mind is a travesty of an inclusion in muffin or cake recipes. I simply don't want those nubbly little bits in my crumb, thank you very much. I want more of a cakey crumb, with texture coming from fruits, nuts or some sort of topping...not from the flour itself.

Luckily for me (and the calendar and anyone reading this) I can carve off that part of my brain that would normally taint my final opinion, stick it into the freezer and just evaluate something on its merits as-is.

Which is a good thing for this recipe.

I liked this muffin. I liked the crumb, really liked the lemony-raspberry flavour and thought the crunchy topping's texture was pretty bang-on. The only thing I didn't really care for was the lemon juice in the crunchy topping--there's more than enough lemon in the cake so there's no need to use it on top. I think I know why it's mixed with the oats and sugar, but I'd rather use water (okay, I'd rather use butter, but this is supposed to be "healthier" than that).

Why did I like this, even thought I don't like wheatie nubblies in my cakes? I think it's because the oats disguised the nubblies and texturally tricked my tongue into liking the muffin. Hey, that's perfectly okay...I'm one for feeding people unfavourite food and then rejoicing when they tell me they like it before they find out it was aubergine or it contained fish sauce (I don't let them rescind their yums when they find out it's a food they don't like).

So, in my humble opinion, we've got a good recipe with this one. So much so that I'm seriously considering changing some of my favourite muffin recipes to include whole wheat and the crunchy topping....

cheers!
jasmine

I'm such a pinhead

Or...how crunchy turned into mushy

Or....don't go shopping when you're hungry.

Or...read the ENTIRE label before you commit something to your shopping trolley...or better yet, before you take it home.

And no, I'm not intentionally jumping onto the pinhead/steelcut/Irish/Scottish oats bandwagon. I accidentally fell into it.

A few weeks ago I was in a crunchy mood and wanted to make some granola. Unfortunately, I was weak with hunger when I went shopping and and didn't read the cannister label carefuly enough: I saw "oats" on the label and simply found a home for the can in my shopping cart. It was only when I got home when I saw the error of my ways.

It wasn't a lovely container of rolled oats (quick cook or regular). It was a can of pinhead oats.

I suppose another sort of person would simply get back into her car and sheepishly exchange it for what she really wanted.

Not I.

It would have been, in some weirdly inexplicable way, admitting defeat. I mean pinhead oats are a perfectly wonderful foodstuff so why should I return them?

Yeah, I'm stubborn.

And my crunchy mood was pushed aside to figure out what to do with something I think of as...mushy.

I was also a pinhead virgin. Before now, I've only eaten oatmeal made with rolled oats--and usually the instant kind (peaches and cream, if you're interested). My dad, who eats a tureen of soupy oatmeal every morning, also limits himself to rolled oats, so he wouldn't have been of much use.

Did I mention that these things have a nine-year shelf life? I was bound and determined to put them to use before 2017.

Thank goodness for the Web. After paging through what seemed like an unending list of porridgy variants, I found various other uses for these pelletty pieces, including

• rice substitutes,
• baked goods
• burgers and stirfries

But with all these choices, what did I do?

I made porridge--not just "any" porridge, but Duncan Hilditch's porridge. If I'm going to learn how to make a good porridge, it might as well be using the directives of a porridge making champion.

I'd like to say that I wanted to try it in the way it was supposed to be eaten, but in fact I read somewhere that I could make a pot of it, stick it in the fridge and then microwave servings in the morning. In other words, an instant, homemade, hot and healthy breakfast. I was also weary of muffins, scones and other bready baked goods and needed a bit of a break.

Each morning that week, I spooned a serving into a bowl, microwaved it and poured buttermilk on it and stirred in a spoon of marmelade.

Maybe it was the vague similarities to the cream of wheat my mum made when I was little(r), but I think I actually prefer pinhead oats over rolled oats: it was nutty tasting, with a tapioca pudding-like texture (and I really, really like tapioca pudding).

Needless to say, you may notice steel cut oats showing up in recipes over the next little while.

Which only means...I'm a pinhead.

cheers!
jasmine

Breakfast for supper

It doesn't take much for me to pounce on breakfast. I'm more than happy to scramble an egg or two, fry some mushrooms or whip up some pancakes. And as anyone who meets me in Toronto, or comes out here knows, my first restaurant suggestion is usually one of a handful of favourite breakfast or brunch specialists.

So when Dear Friend agreed to come over yesterday to alleviate me of my wireless woes (hence the reason I'm posting this today, and not yesterday), I knew what we'd have for supper.

I know, I know, most people go for Pancakes on Pancake Tuesday, but not me, not this time. Don't get me wrong--I'm a happy flapjack-flippin' fiend--but this time, waffles beckoned. Not just any waffle, but gingerbread waffles.

I grew up only knowing toaster waffles--frozen, cardboard-like discs studded with the remnants of freezerburned, deccicated blueberries. Sure they were a bit thin and tasted of petroleum byproducts, but that woven pattern--with all those valleys just waiting to cup a few drops of maple syrup or honey or some freshly melted butter were just bliss to the seven-year old I was.

Later I discovered what I thought of as restaurant-styled waffles: light, crispy...and unlike toaster waffles, their sheer size meant that one usually sufficed. If I was blissful with my grocer's freezer's offerings, I was in sheer ecstasy over real waffles.

I don't know what possessed my parents to buy a waffle iron, when I was in university. I can only guess at a happy combination of my father's love affair with all things gadgetty, and my mother's obsession with many things kitchenny. I'm only happy my father didn't try and build one, sight unseen.

So, there we were with a waffle iron...and no recipes--the instrument must have come with some, but for whatever reason, we didn't try them. My mum tried using pancake batter, and then variants of that batter (including one that used chopped bacon) but they didn't work out well...we were stumped. I'd told them of the waffles I'd had at restaurants and they wanted to try their hands at making some.

Back then--before the time of blogs, before the Web was more than a single silken thread, and when Usenet was the place to be (well...for some of us), I posted a request for waffle recipes; a wonderful person named Linda helped me out.

Her Gingerbread Waffles are to me, the perfect waffle--not too sweet and lightly spiced, and they fill the kitchen with a wonderful, almost Christmassy aroma. They are quite popular with everyone who's tried them--no one says no to these. Heck, I even had a marriage proposal because of them (of course I said "no"...he was only interested in my baked goods).

I prefer them pooled in sticky, smoky maple syrup with little rivulets of melted butter, but they are equally good with dollops of whipped cream or warmed caramelised apple slices.

Linda's Gingerbread Waffles

260g plain flour

1 dspn (2tsp) baking powder

1/2tsp salt

1Tbsp sugar

1tsp ground ginger

1tsp ground cinnamon

1/2tsp ground cloves

3 egg yolks

125ml melted butter

375ml whole milk

3 egg whites

Whisk together the dry ingredients and set aside. Mix together the yolks, butter and milk. Add the milky yolk mixture to the dry ingredients and mix until combined. Set aside while you beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Fold the whites into the batter and let stand for at least 30 minutes. Truth be told, I usually make the batter the night before and let it sit in the fridge, tightly wrapped.

cheers!
jasmine

waffles