Delicious Belgian-Style Waffles using a cheapo $10 waffle iron

This plate is proof that:

1) You do not have to settle for cardboardy frozen waffles from the store, or make the effort to beat the crowd at the local popular breakfast joint on a Saturday morning in order to get good waffles, and

2) You do not have to spend over $10 for a decent waffle iron!!

So Michael and I impulse-bought the cheapo, generic brand (Chefmate) waffle iron at Target a couple of months back. I've been pining away for a waffle iron for a little while now, partly because this was a breakfast item that Michael professed little experience eating, and yet he was not inclined to buy any supermarket frozen waffles in order to try them firsthand. And certainly as we knew with pancakes, such things are much better enjoyed at home in the comfort of pajamas rather than outside in some busy, greasy breakfast joint.

To our delight and surprise, we've been getting pretty tasty results with this little cheapo thing. There are couple of waffle iron-specific idiosyncrasies that we've intuitively felt out as we went along:

1) We titrated up to the perfect volume of batter for complete full waffles without it oozing out the sides of the iron (roughly 1/3 cup for each side),

2) We determined that the correct time of cooking for the appointed 1/3 cup batter is approx 10-12 minutes in a well-pre-heated wafflemaker, which gives a nice crispy, brown crust while maintaining a fluffy, moist interior.

As far as recipes go, we first tried a buttermilk one from America's Test Kitchen (Mark Donlin's favorite peeps! we like them too as well), which was a good classic waffle. We probably should give that recipe another try since our sense of how well that recipe performed was made inaccurate by the fact that it was the batch of waffles we were trying to figure out how much and how long to cook the waffles in general, resulting in a few undercooked waffles in that batch.

We since then have tried two recipes from Elizabeth Alston's Pancakes and Waffles, courtesy of the Carnegie Library. The first is dubbed the "Best-ever waffles" by the book (recipe posted online here), and featured buttermilk, cinnamon, and a bit of whole wheat flour for a hearty tasting waffle. It was good, but it didn't make as deep of an impression upon me as this week's recipe, "Rich Belgian-Style Waffles." These were excellent--lightly sweet, fluffy and moist, rich, and with a nice caramelly crust. We didn't have enough sour cream, so we added about 1 & 1/2 containers (~6 ounces) of Activia vanilla yogurt to make the full 1 cup and then didn't add the 2 teaspoons sugar that the recipe called for. I wonder if this substitution was fortuitous--we'll have to make it correctly with all sour cream next time and see if it is equivalently tasty.

Last dregs of the batter in our little ol' trusty wafflemaker.

Rich Belgian-Style Waffles (adapted from Pancakes and Waffles by Elizabeth Alston)

Ingredients:
1 large egg
1 cup regular or reduced-fat sour cream (we used mostly vanilla yogurt for this)
1/2 cup milk
3 tablespoons mild olive oil or melted butter (we just used our regular extra-virgin olive oil)
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons granulated sugar (omitted due to using sweetened yogurt)
Oil for cooking

Instructions:
Separate the eggs, putting yolk in medium sized bowl. To the yolk, add the sour cream, milk, oil or butter, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and flour--don't mix together yet.

In another bowl, beat the egg white to soft peaks. Add the sugar and beat until stiff peaks form.

Now mix together the egg and dairy and flour mixture on low speed or by hand until just blended. Fold beaten egg white into batter using a rubber spatula.

Cook waffles on your waffle iron as according to experience or manufacturer's instructions. Basically, preheat your iron, grease iron lightly, pour appropriate amount of batter and spread the batter to edges, and close the iron and cook until iron will open easily and you have good color/crispness on your waffle. Keep cooked waffles in 200 degree oven to keep warm until ready to serve. Leave uncovered in oven to maintain crispness.