Tuesday, December 28, 2010

How Laura saved Christmas

Ever since going to Off the Waffle, I have been obsessed with the idea of making Liege waffles at home. (Mostly because driving eight hours for breakfast is ridiculous. But if you start by aiming to drive eight hours for dinner at Marché, stay the night, THEN have breakfast at Off the Waffle, it's totally reasonable.)

So. I found a recipe, I ordered the special sugar, and I had planned to make them Christmas morning. I had glanced through the recipe, and read some stuff online that said that they needed to rise for an hour. My plan was to pull my ingredients the night before, get up an hour before the rest of the family, prep the waffles, and let them rise while we open gifts.

While I was busily paving the road to Hell with all my good intentions, I printed out the recipe, and really looked at it. This recipe had better curl my toes for how much work it is. Read for yourself, I'll stay here.

1 1/2 hours to rise, do some stuff, let it rise for 4 hours, fridge for 30 mins, do some stuff, fridge it overnight,  do some stuff, let it rise 90 minutes, THEN throw it on the waffle iron.

(For those of you doing the math, that's 6 hours of waiting the day before, then - let's assume that overnight is another 8 hours, then another 1 1/2 hours. That's 15 1/2 hours of prep.)

Naturally, I was disappointed that I had RUINED CHRISTMAS by promising the family fancy Belgian waffles, and now they were going to get boring old scrambled eggs. Laura had been busily texting me while she was getting ready, making sure we had all necessary provisions in place.

When I dramatically announced that the waffles weren't happening, due a complete and utter failure to plan on my part, she directed me to a cookbook (practically to the page) so that we could still have delicious waffles, minus the 15 1/2 hours of prep. See?

Waffle!
That is a cow waffle. Mmm! (You can find the waffle iron here; you'll never have ho-hum waffles!)


And that is how Laura saved Christmas.

4 comments:

  1. Waffles for breakfast? Only if they're the left over from a family baking session the day before! Fresh waffles are an afternoon thing in Belgium.

    We always make the other (airy) waffles. They also contain yeast, but only take a few hours to rise. They're a reason why we buy the Liège waffles from the little stalls and don't make them. I actually don't know if they're any different from the Brussels sugar waffles. Hmmm.

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  2. Way to go Laura saving the day!

    I bought a waffle iron 6? years ago and never made them. While I don't think I'll be breaking it out for the Liege waffles any time soon your pics are making me want to make some waffles tomorrow morning.

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  3. Off the Waffle is soooo good! We moved from Eugene to Boston, MA this past summer and I really miss those waffles :(

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  4. Made me look. The circus waffle iron over there? Just wait for my grandson to get a little bigger.

    Go Laura! And go you for even considering making waffles that involved. Yowsers.

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