While eating a delightful waffle at The Oaks in Pipersville I asked the server, “How does the chef get them so light and crisp?”
She smiled and said that they are very popular. But she said the chef, Mike McCombe, who was a longtime culinary instructor at Middle Bucks Institute of Technology, probably wouldn’t tell us his secret.
That got me thinking about how I have made light, crisp waffles in the past.
One day years ago I got word that a horde of hungry cheerleaders would be descending on my home in about an hour. I turned to my favorite source of culinary instruction: the cookbooks of Bucks County’s own author/chef Pam Anderson.
Anderson’s recipes do much more than give you ingredients and basic directions. They explain the hows and whys of what makes them work and exactly what she did to achieve a perfect recipe.
In her recipe for light, crisp waffles in “CookSmart: Perfect Recipes for Every Day” (Houghton Mifflin), she reminds you to not stack the waffles because it makes them limp and that corn starch is the key to making them “crisp on the outside and tender yet toothsome inside.” In the recipe she tells you to lay the finished waffles on the bare oven rack to keep them crisp on the outside. Believe me, it works. I had a happy group of cheerleaders after they ate their pile of waffles.
This recipe can be doubled, tripled or quadrupled. If you don’t have buttermilk you can substitute plain yogurt or combine 1 cup milk with 1 tablespoon lemon juice to make 1 cup, or combine ¾ cup sour cream plus ¼ cup milk.
¾ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup cornstarch
½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup buttermilk
6 tablespoons vegetable oil
¼ cup whole milk
1 large egg, separated
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pure maple syrup, for serving
1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Mix flour, cornstarch, salt, baking powder and baking soda in a medium bowl. Put buttermilk, milk and oil in a 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup, mix in egg yolk and set aside.
2. Beat egg white almost to soft peaks, Sprinkle in sugar and continue to beat until whites are firm and glossy. Beat in vanilla.
3. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and whisk until just mixed. Add egg white to batter in dollops and fold in with a spatula until just incorporated.
4. Add batter to hot waffle iron and cook until crisp and nutty brown. Set waffle on oven rack for at least 5 minutes and up to 20 minutes to keep warm and crisp. Repeat with remaining batter. Serve immediately with syrup.
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