They’re waffles, dammit

Alright, I know. People put their entire life story in blog posts before they’ll tell you how to cook something. We get it — you lead a rich, textured life full of wonder, excitement, and anecdotes about food you ate in a small town in Portugal. We’re all happy for you.

I’ll try to cut to the chase, with a bit of context in case this sounds familiar to you. For years, I operated under the firm belief that vegan waffles simply could not exist. Not shouldn’t exist. Could not. Some immutable law of physics involving eggs and airiness and crispiness that I had absolutely no clue about. A few years ago, a thought occurred to me: “wait, that’s stupid.” So I bought a used waffle iron for $10 from someone in our apartment complex — confirming that yes, someone will always buy your old waffle iron. There is a market. Maybe even a waffle iron black market. I didn’t get that deep into the waffle iron game, so I don’t know.

I started with the King Arthur “classic buttermilk” recipe, running the standard vegan substitutions: soy milk plus vinegar for buttermilk, egg replacer for eggs, you probably know the drill. It’s genuinely good — the almond/pecan flour gives it a nice complexity — but sometimes you don’t want complexity. Sometimes you just want a waffle. A regular waffle. A waffle that doesn’t have a backstory or an art degree.

So, I went looking. Searching “best vegan waffles” surfaced the usual results: recipes calling for ground flaxseeds, aquafaba, the tears of well-intentioned food bloggers. I made several of them. They were dense, chewy, and you could taste those food blogger tears in just how sad the waffles were. I just wanted some normal waffles. Was the egg thing true? Is it a me thing? Am I bad at waffles? These are the questions that haunt a man.

So, this past weekend, I rolled up my sleeves and thought “fuck it, let’s go again.” I ended up back at King Arthur, but a different starting point: The Best Waffles Ever Recipe. But, I wanted to solve around the egg substitution issue. To be honest, I don’t want to mess with egg substitutes. I don’t want flax eggs, I don’t want potato starch, chia seeds, aquafaba, or whatever else people use. I just want waffles, dude.

So, I left the eggs out altogether, tweaked the ingredients to give it some extra lift/crispiness/what have you, and whipped up a batter. The only thing that worried me was the batter itself was just a bit thin compared to typical waffle batter. Not crazy thin, but a bit too thin for what I’d expect. But, I ran with it, and I ended up with a recipe that actually cranked out some regular old delicious, crispy, fluffy waffles.

So, now I have waffles that I can slap together without too much hassle, no crazy ingredients necessary, and they actually taste like waffles. They crisp like waffles. They eat like waffles. They’re waffles, dammit. And that’s all that I ever wanted.

Recipe

Wet Ingredients

• 1.5 cups soy milk
• 1.5 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp butter, melted
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Dry Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 4 tsp yellow cornmeal
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 0.5 tsp baking soda
• 0.25 tsp table salt
• 0.5 tsp granulated sugar
• 1 tbsp corn starch
• 1 tbsp non-diastatic malt powder (optional, but awesome to include)

Instructions

1. In a bowl/measuring cup, combine and stir the soy milk and apple cider vinegar to make the “buttermilk” — it’ll thicken over the course of about 10 minutes.
2. While the “buttermilk” is coming together, melt your butter in the microwave or wherever you typically melt your butter. I’m not here to judge.
3. Combine all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together until well integrated.
4. Whisk together the “buttermilk,” melted butter, vegetable oil, and vanilla until well integrated.
5. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, mixing with a whisk until just combined. Don’t overmix — it’s alright if it’s a little lumpy. Hooray, you now have waffle batter.
6. Rest the waffle batter for 10 minutes on the counter or in the fridge. Use this time to heat up your waffle iron.
7. Make waffles. Eat waffles. Enjoy waffles.

Notes

I know that people have a zillion rules that they follow to make waffles (e.g., obey the “done” indicator like it’s the law; ignore the “done” indicator because it’s a dirty liar; pay attention to when the steam stops coming out the side; or don’t; or wait until it halfway stops then sacrifice a copy of Flipside Fan Zine Issue 32). I now have a Cuisinart waffle iron, and I just set it at the recommended medium setting, and pull the waffles when the light goes off. And it came out great. So, I dunno, do whatever it is that you do with your own waffle iron to get them to turn out how you like them. Me, I just followed the indicator light and everything was great.