Maple Oat Waffles and a Krups Waffle Maker Review

Disclosure: I was sent a very shiny Krups waffle maker to try-for years, I've wanted to try my hand at waffles since I never owned a waffle maker, so I agreed. Opinions are my own. I was not paid anything, just given a waffle maker to play with and the following is what I thought.



I'm a very big fan of having breakfast for dinner. It's never been hard for me to accept having eggs or pancakes for dinner, but all these years I wondered about waffles. Is it worth it to get a waffle maker? Would I use it? Are they hard to make?

The answer: yes, I would use it. I've already made waffles twice, and am dreaming of trying new recipes. Somehow, my family likes them much more than pancakes. Maybe it's the deep pockets and the toasty outside, or the novelty of pouring the batter and closing the lid. Whatever the reason, we're now all in love with waffles.

The Krups 65475 Four slice Belgian Waffle Maker looks great on my counter, and I love how it latches shut and can store upright in my cupboard. For those with not a lot of storage space, that feature alone is a plus.


The waffle maker also has features like a ready light to let you know when it's hot, hidden cord storage, and non-stick plates.

I'm not that experienced at making waffles, so I don't have a lot to compare this particular model to, but I can say that it was easy to use. The unit heated up fine and cooked waffles in about four minutes. The plates allow you to cook four at once and the pockets are nice and deep, giving you plenty of space to fill with syrup. The unit is also fairly easy to clean.



Are there drawbacks? A few. The cool-touch handle isn't cool. Steam tends to seep out the front of the unit and makes the handle too hot to touch. At first I was tempted to lift the lid using the latch, but then realized that this would likely make it break off. I have resorted to using a tea towel to keep from burning myself.



Judging how much batter to put in the unit can be a little tricky. Too little, and you get not-quite-complete waffles. Too much, and the batter overflows onto the sides, which are hard to clean. All the crevices and corners are a bit difficult to chisel waffle batter out of. The waffles aren't completely evenly cooked-some places would be cooked more than others.



Overall, I think the Krups waffle maker is a good quality unit that makes some pretty awesome waffles and is easy to use. I wouldn't let kids use it unless they are older, as the handle and burning themselves would be a big concern.

Want a waffle recipe? Read on for a toasty delicious Maple Oat Waffle recipe.

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Maple Oat Waffles

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a snack, waffles are a favourite in my house. When these were cooking away in my new Krups waffle maker (read about how well that baby cooks up waffles), both John and Kevin came wandering into the kitchen and took a sniff. Sweet and bread-like, this is an extremely tasty recipe.

Oat flour may be a bit difficult to find in a typical grocery store. I found oat flour at Anita's Organic Mill here in Chilliwack on Yale Road. You can actually find a lot of specialty flours at the store, along with all kinds of other things such as beans, lentils, and baking supplies. Anita's products are also carried in retail locations in Western Canada and online. I love using different flours and experimenting with the various tastes and textures. Oat gives a slightly nutty flavour to these waffles, and combined with the oat bran, they really are somewhat healthy.



Ingredients:

1/2 cup oat bran
1 cup oat flour
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 cups whole milk
4 eggs, separated
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp sugar

1. Heat 1 cup of the milk until steaming hot. Pour over the oat bran and let it sit while you continue with the recipe.

2. In a large bowl, sift and then whisk together the oat flour, all purpose flour, baking powder, and salt. If you get a few little bits of grains left behind in the sifter, be sure to add them back into the mixture. Set aside.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, vanilla, and maple syrup.

4. Stir 1 cup of cold milk into the oat bran and warm milk. The cold milk will bring the temperature down. Whisk the milk and oat bran mixture with the egg yolks and maple syrup.

5. Using an electric mixer, beat your egg whites. At first, they will be frothy but then will begin to become thick, like pictured below. Add 1 tbsp of sugar.


Continue beating the egg whites until fluffy, like cotton candy. It takes approximately three minutes.


Once the egg whites look like this, stop beating them. You don't want to over beat them. If you do, they'll crack and look mealy.

6. Stir the egg and milk mixture into the flour mixture until blended. Don't worry if there are a few lumps still throughout the batter. Fold half of the egg whites into the batter. You don't want to deflate the egg whites so be extra gentle. Add the other half of the egg whites and fold them in as well, being very careful to completely incorporate them but still being careful not to deflate them.

7. The batter will be fluffy and should be cooked right away, or the batter will deflate as it sits. Brush the waffle maker with melted butter, then ladle out about 1/2 cup of the batter at a time (per waffle) into a pre-heated waffle maker. Close the lid and cook the waffles for about 4 minutes.



8. Eat those babies right out of the waffle maker, while they are hot. We liked them topped with yogurt and then drizzled with blueberry syrup. The yogurt is a much nicer (and less fattening) substitute for whipping cream or ice cream. I found a fantastic yogurt from Ridgecrest Dairy at Abbotsford's Lepp Farm Market. Sometimes people find natural yogurt to be a little sour, but this one is really fantastic.


Makes about 12 waffles

 Adapted from Good to the Grain

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BBQ Pulled Chicken Wraps With Avocado Bacon Salsa

Sometimes when I don’t feel like cooking, I get creative with leftovers and the end result is a new recipe. It’s not like I set out to make something new, it just happens because I’m hungry and create something with what I have in the kitchen.

It’s all about being hungry and taking risks, you know. That’s why this kitchen is fearless. What's the worst that could happen? If it bombs there's still food around to eat, but if it's amazing then I have something great!

First of all, I made this slowcooker pulled BBQ chicken but instead of using Bullseye BBQ sauce, I made the sauce from these maple chipotle chicken thighs and used that instead. Holy smoky , delicious flavor! The meat was piled on salads, in buns, you name it-but we still had lots leftover.  What to with it?

I’ll tell you what to do-pile it into a tortilla and top it with smoky bacon avocado salsa, that’s what.

Ingredients

2 cups of saucy pulled BBQ chicken meat, warmed slightly

4 ten inch soft flour tortillas

1 ½ avocados, diced

2 roma tomatoes, seeded and diced

5 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled

1 lime

Salt and fresh cracked pepper

2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

2 tbsp minced red onion

In  a medium sized bowl, toss together the avocado, tomato, red onion, cilantro, and bacon. Zest the lime over top, cut the lime in half, then squeeze the juice over top. Stir gently. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Lay the tortillas out in front of you.  Divide the chicken between them in the center, and then pile on the avocado salsa on top of the meat. Fold the sides inwards, then fold the side closest to you up and over the filling, tucking it all in and the sides in as well. Roll the tortilla away from you. Slice the wrap in half and set it on a plate, seam side down.

 Makes 4 wraps

Want more fearless cooking? Check out my new blog on Yummy Mummy club and learn how to chop an onion, what Gordon Ramsay's new cookbook is like, and a recipe for coconut mango pancakes!

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Lentil Barley Salad with Feta, Spinach, and Tomatoes

Let's be honest, shall we?

 I don't really like green lentils. I'm not sure why-maybe it's the soup I've made before with them that seemed tasteless and horrible, or the fact that their texture was always a little weird to me, but I just never have liked them. Red lentils are fine in curry to thicken, but that's as far as it goes. So it seems a little weird that out of the blue I decided to make this salad, but I was trying to use up some of the ingredients in my cupboards and fridge, plus the photo in the cookbook looked amazing, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Have you done that before? Cooked something solely because the photo of it made it look delicious? I have. Once I made liver from a magazine because the photo looked amazing, and I completely ignored that it was..well.. LIVER. It tasted disgusting, as liver does, and was the one time I refused to eat my own cooking, excused 4 year old Kevin, and made us sandwiches.

I digress! Back to this tasty lentil salad!

So, the salad. It was really, very good. The barley and lentils give it a nice nutty, grainy taste, and the salty feta with tomatoes and spinach really add to it. Kevin had three helpings and we we still had enough to put in our lunches tomorrow. It would be really great alongside some grilled chicken seasoned with oregano, garlic, and lemon and a green salad for a little more veggie crunch. I would enjoy it just as a light lunch. You can do what you want with it-I ended up adding more feta because I'm a cheese lover, and then I bumped up the veggies too. You can change things up however you wish. I used only about half of the dressing, since we are a family that doesn't like too much dressing on anything. You can judge this for yourself, and use the leftover dressing on a nice green salad later in the week.


Ingredients:

1/2 cup dry green lentils
1/2 cup pearl barley
1 garlic clove, peeled
a handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
1 packed cup of fresh spinach, roughly chopped
1/2 cup feta cheese
1/4 of a small red onion, chopped finely
fresh cracked pepper

Dressing:
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp grainy mustard, or dijon
1 tsp honey

In a medium saucepan, stir the lentils, garlic, and barley together, then cover with a few inches of water. Turn the heat to medium and bring it to a boil, then let it simmer uncovered for about 45 minutes, checking now and then and adding a little more water if you need to. The barley and lentils should be tender with a teeny bit of bite, with barely any water left. Spread them out in a dish and let them cool. Remove the garlic clove and throw it away-or you could just chop it up and throw it in the salad, which is what I did.

Once the lentils and barley are cool, toss them in a medium sized bowl with the cherry tomatoes, spinach, cheese, and onion. Sprinkle with pepper and toss.

To make the dressing, measure the ingredients in a jam jar with a tight fitting lid, and give it a shake until it thickens and is well mixed.

Drizzle the dressing over the salad and toss well. We only used a small amount of dressing since that is how we roll, but you can use more if you wish. The leftover dressing would be great drizzled on a tossed green salad and will keep for a few days in the fridge.

Makes 4 servings

Adapted from Spilling the Beans

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What's in the Veggie Box?

Recently, a neighbour of mine told about Rick and Deena's Fruit & Veggies, a produce delivery service in my area. I have been looking for CSA boxes in Chilliwack but couldn't really find much. Most were quite expensive and it didn't seem like you got much for your dollar, so I held off and continued to shop at the market.

Once I heard about Rick and Deena, I thought I would give them a try and see how it goes! Today we found our box sitting on our back porch. What was inside?




Green onions
Cauliflower
Broccoli
Onions
Carrots
Strawberries
Russet Potatoes
Navel Oranges
Golden Delicious Apples
Romaine
Spinach
Roma Tomatoes
Bananas

All were clean and fresh looking, and non required much in the way of prep. I brought it in the house and unpacked, chopping up the broccoli and sorting through/de-stemming the spinach so that it could all go in the fridge. In fact I think I took more care than usual, which is interesting.

Do you get a CSA box? What do you like best about it? I felt like it was Christmas, and seeing what was packed in there made me excited. The funny thing is I already had quite a bit of produce, so now I have SO much I'm not sure what to do with it all.

Thus, here on Chasing Tomatoes you're going to hear about what's in my CSA box and what I'm doing with it. I have NINE bananas. Will we eat them all, or will I have to come up with something? What about all that spinach?  Instead of how I used to write-finding recipes and then buying ingredients to make them, I'm switching things up. Instead I'm going to look at the produce I have, and figure it out from there.

This could make for some really interesting food blogging.

Do you get a veggie and fruit box delivery?

PS.. I apologize that I've been so lame about getting comments going here. Promise to have that fixed by the end of the week! 

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A Healthier Chinese Noodle Soup Bowl

Being back at blogging is a little more challenging than I thought it would be. Partly because I have all these places to be writing-here, over at Notes From the Cookie Jar, on Yummy Mummy Club, and over at the Real Women of Philadelphia site. Sometimes, I just fall asleep on my couch and figure that you all won't mind if I sleep instead of write. Back when I was away from blogging, that happened a lot. These days it's happening less as the weather is getting nicer and I feel a bit more energized.

I've been cooking less. No longer am I pumping out the volume of recipe posts that I used to, so I've been allowing myself more time to play in the kitchen and create things that are really mine. This often comes about because now that it's just Kevin and I at home (John is still working in Sechelt during the week), I don't need to make as much and I can make all sorts of things that John normally wouldn't eat, like curries and Asian food. I've worked harder at getting our grocery bill lower and using up the things in our pantry. It's like a challenge some days to make dinner out of almost nothing left in the fridge, but even though the grocery store is a 5 minute walk away I find myself too lazy to make the trek.

Doing this inspired me to try to make a healthier noodle bowl. Do you remember those horrible noodle package soups that we ate as kids? Not content to even eat those as is, I'd always mince up some carrots and throw them in, along with some peas or corn to add some real veggies to the mix. Occasionally a lightly beaten egg would be stirred in as well, it's yellow strands thickening up the soup to make something thick and filling.

Kevin hasn't had those noodles in so long I daresay he likely doesn't even know what they taste like. In an effort to make something similar but with less sodium and more  veggies, the other night I made this. There's lots of veggies and noodles with just enough broth to slurp up at the end.


Ingredients:

1 lb prawns, peeled and de-veined  (you could use a cooked chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces instead)
2 green onions, chopped (green parts only)
1 can of mini corn cobs
1 shallot, minced
1 tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and minced
2/3  cup frozen peas
2 carrots, peeled and minced
4 cups chicken stock
2 tbsp soy sauce (or soy sauce substitute)
1 tsp sesame oil
4-5 oz fine Chinese egg noodles

In a large soup pot, saute the shallot and ginger in vegetable oil until softened and fragrant. Stir in the chopped carrots and continue to stir and cook for about a minute or two. Pour in the chicken broth. Bring to a boil.

Once the broth is bubbling, turn the heat down a little and cook for about 5 minutes, testing the carrots occasionally to see when they are tender. Drop the prawns into the broth and let them cook until they turn pink, before fishing them out with a slotted spoon and setting aside.  Add the noodles , corn cobs, and soy sauce to the broth. Cook for about 3 minutes, until the noodles are tender. Stir in the sesame oil, and peas.

Divide the noodle mixture among bowls, topping with the cooked shrimp and scattering with some sesame seeds if you wish. Garnish with the green onions.

Serves 4

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Home made Substitution for Soy Sauce

Going soy free is a pain. You think you're good other than the obvious, but then you start reading labels and realize that everything from Miracle Whip to salad dressings, bread and almost every kind of crackers, or cereal have either soybean oil or soy flour in it. Packaged food is fairly easy to give up, although now and then we whine that something we love is now on the "do not consume" list.

Oreos? Totally out. Kevin was SO SAD.

The one casualty of the new soy and corn free diet is Asian food. It's pretty hard to make Asian dishes without soy sauce-what about stir fries, sauces, and more? They all have soy! We struggled a little and I read a LOT of labels, but couldn't find anything. There is soy free soy sauce out there somewhere, I've been told, but in all my searching  I haven't found it. Many people have suggested Bragg's Liquid Aminos to us, but what they don't realize is Bragg's is made with non GMO soy. So it is good if you are avoiding GMO food, but it's still made of soy.

No soy for you! I still have some in the house, but only John and I eat it. (photo by Creative Tools)

At any rate, I wanted to make salad rolls and was trying to find a dip for them. Every Asian sauce I found had soy in it, until I finally stumbled across this recipe for a soy sauce alternative in the Times Colonist. After trying it I can say that it's really easy to put together, and while it doesn't taste exactly like soy sauce, I think it's a good alternative. You can adjust the amount of salt in it, which is good for us as we always found soy sauce too salty anyway. In a recipe such as the peanut dipping sauce for our salad rolls, it was perfect. I've thought about adding Worcestershire (Lea and Perrins is soy free) or a splash of sake, but we'll see.

I can't wait to try it in other uses and see how it turns out.

Ingredients:

1 cup beef stock (low sodium)
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp plus 1 tsp cooking molasses
pinch of each pepper, garlic powder, ground ginger to taste
salt to taste

Mix the beef stock, balsamic vinegar, cider vinegar, and molasses together in a small saucepan and bring it to a simmer. Turn the heat down and continue to simmer it until the mixture is reduced to 2/3 of a cup.  Stir in the pinches of pepper, garlic powder, ginger, and salt.

Cool and store in a jar with a tightly sealed lid. The sauce will keep in the fridge for about 10 days.

Makes 2/3 cup

Adapted from the Times Colonist by Eric Akis

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