Easy Belgian Waffles Recipe

Hey, I’m John Canel and today we’re making some crisp and golden Belgian waffles, so let’s get started.

Preparation

First off, preheat your waffle maker. I would choose maybe a three or so; you want to go on the crisper side, understanding that the first waffle will be a little darker.

Dry Ingredients

Now, in a large bowl, we’re going to whisk together the dry ingredients, starting with 2 and 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour—that is 270 g. The flour goes in the bowl. We’re not making pasta. There are two leavening agents here: one, baking powder. I’m going to use four teaspoons—one, two, three, and four. Working with the baking powder will be all of our fluffed-up egg whites; they’re going to be really expanding once they get heated up and make this the fluffiest, most amazing crispy waffle ever.

For some contrast, 3/4 of a teaspoon of salt. This is an estimate. I’m going to tell you why: I develop my recipes, and most people develop recipes with kosher sea salt. The grain sizes are all the same, and sea salt is nice and mellow. But at home, you might have iodized table salt, which is extra salty and harsh; you might have Diamond Crystal, which is less salty and even more mellow than sea salt. So know your salt—use what you want: half a teaspoon if it’s extra salty, maybe up to a teaspoon if you really like that bite.

To sweeten things up and soften our waffles—they’re not bready but nice and cakey—I’m adding 50 g or 1/4 cup of granulated sugar. Grab a whisk and mix it up.

Make-Ahead Tips

If you are not a morning person but love delicious things in the morning, you have a couple of options. You can mix up the wet and the dry ingredients and have them waiting—dry ingredients covered on the counter, wet ingredients in the fridge—or make these waffles ahead of time and freeze them. Then you just pop them into the toaster, and they are good as golden. I make giant batches of waffles, and then I heat them as needed, and it’s such a time-saver; everyone’s happy.

Wet Ingredients

My scale is done; my waffle maker is ready. I’m going to grab a medium bowl and get my wet ingredients together. This recipe has two eggs, but we have to separate them. The yolks are going to go into the medium mixing bowl, and the egg whites will go into the other smaller medium mixing bowl.

There are different types of Belgian waffles. I might consider the ultra-traditional one to be a yeasted variety, so it has a little bit of a bready texture and is leavened naturally with yeast. This, I think, is the quicker and easier version, which is more common. We have the egg whites that are going to heat up in the waffle iron, and all those little bubbles we’ll make will puff up and really push the waffle and give you a very airy interior with a nice crisp edge.

Now, to the egg yolks, I’m adding two cups of whole milk. Give that a whisk. I’m also going to use half a cup of vegetable oil. If you wanted to use butter, you really could, but there’s a catch: the butter is going to cool down and form little nodules, so you would have to heat up your milk. That’s basically it—you want warm ingredients if you’re going to use melted butter. If you want, you could use 1/4 cup melted butter and 1/4 cup of vegetable oil to have the beautiful taste of butter and the softness of the oil. Two teaspoons of vanilla will go a long way, so add that in, give it a mix, and we can set this aside.

Egg Whites

Now we only have our two egg whites that we’re going to froth up until we have stiff peaks. With the hand mixer, start on lowish speed and move up to high. This recipe is pretty foolproof, but if you wanted to, you could add some sugar to the egg whites—so reserve some from the dry mixture, add some in here. I think it could give you a bit of a stiffer meringue that’ll fold in really well, but I talk to my friends about it, and they say that it doesn’t matter. You could try it out and let me know if it works. Nice and stiff—look at that!

Combining the Batter

We’re going to combine all of our ingredients, starting with the wet into the dry. Give it a mix until it is almost combined; you still want to see streaks of flour. I’ve got to say, this is just one extra step different from a regular waffle recipe, because in the regular waffle recipe you just add the eggs into the wet ingredients. Here, we’re separating and fluffing, and that gives you a nice change. They’re both delicious, but it’s nice to have a change of pace, and then this recipe is better suited for the taller waffles that you’d like for a Belgian waffle.

We’re going to add our fluffed egg whites in now. Fold that mixture together so that you can maintain as many of these beautiful bubbles as possible: scoop up, cut through, scoop up, cut it through. You’re cutting into the egg whites to fold it together without crushing. Fold as carefully as you can, but then at the end, you’re always going to have little lumps of egg hanging out, and then you’re just going to gently stir it together. The idea is you’re folding the mixture together to lighten it up, and then once it’s fairly light, you can do some mixing without doing a lot of damage. I finish off by using my spatula just to kind of paw at the mixture, and in doing so, I’ll discover some little unmixed bits of egg white. This looks nice.

Cooking the Waffles

My waffle iron is ready. I actually turned it off because it kept beeping at me nonstop, and now we’re going to scoop it up and get to work. Before you get started, grab a wire rack; you want to put your waffles on here as you cook them because the steam will go through and they’ll stay nice and crisp. If you pop them onto a plate, they’ll get kind of soggy on the bottom, which is not delicious.

All right, you want about a third of a cup, but it really depends on your waffle maker—everyone’s different, so read the instructions. Close it up and wait for the beep. This looks good. Carefully remove it onto the wire rack and repeat. My waffle iron is fairly large, so I’m using almost 2/3 of a cup of batter for each waffle, but that’s really for wedge-shaped waffles, so just follow the instructions.

It’s not a total mystery when your waffles are done, because there’s a sign: when the steam starts dissipating and going away, that means that they’re cooked through and they’re in the golden browning stage.

Final Result

Fluffy, golden, and a perfect vehicle for berries, whipped cream, and lots of syrup. I hope you get a chance to make this recipe.