These waffles are crunchy on the outside and egg-y and moist on the inside.
The Angry Chef and I both like ours slathered with thin slices of cold butter and dripping with good, local maple syrup. If there are any leftover, I like to reheat them in the toaster oven and melt a little cheese over them.
A note on ingredients & equipment
I have an older VillaWare waffle maker that makes 2 waffles at a time.
My favorite—and a kind of ridiculous—thing about it is that it makes a happy, chirping “Waffle Tone” when it’s hot enough to add the batter.
When it comes to actually cooking the waffles, follow the instructions that came with your particular maker. Each brand will be a little different.
If you have buttermilk on hand, you can use that instead of the milk + lemon juice combination.
Old-Timey Sunday Waffles
2 jumbo eggs
2 cups of whole milk
juice from 1 medium-sized lemon
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
pinch of salt
6 Tbls. butter, melted
spray oil
Makes about 10 four-inch waffles.
Plug your waffle maker in, turn it on, and let it heat up while you make the batter.
Make the sour milk and melt the butter
Cut your butter up into hunks. Put it in a microwave-safe bowl and nuke it for a little less than a minute on high to melt it. Set it aside.
I like to melt the butter before I add it to the batter. Now, a lot of recipes I’ve seen call for butter that’s softened—not melted—but I haven’t seen any difference doing it this way. And it makes it really easy to mix in.
Add the lemon juice to the milk to sour it.
Start the batter
Crack two jumbo eggs into a large mixing bowl.
Beat them well with a whisk until they’re light and fluffy.
Add the soured milk to the beaten eggs.
Whisk well to combine and beat some air into the mixture.
Add the dry ingredients
Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Stir to combine. Beat out any big lumps with a whisk or the back of a wooden spoon.
Pour in the melted butter. Stir to combine well.
The finished batter will be fairly thin. That’s OK. It’s just how you want it. You might have little pieces of butter in the batter. That’s OK, too. They’ll melt right into the waffles when they cook.
Your batter should just coat the back of a spoon, like this:
Cook the waffles
At this point, your waffle maker should be nice and hot. Mine is non-stick, but I still hit it with a little spray oil right before I pour in the batter.
Ladle in the batter, being careful not to overfill the maker. Generally, you want to pour in enough batter so that it just spreads to fill the grid.
Close the waffle maker and cook the waffles according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
For my waffle maker, I set it on almost the highest heat setting. After a few minutes, my waffles have started to develop a nice crust and brown slightly, like this:
I cook them a few minutes longer, to ensure that the inside is cooked through and the outside is nice and crispy. Yank them out of the waffle maker when they look about like this:
Repeat these steps until you’ve used all your batter. If you leave your waffle maker open for a long time, it will lose a little heat and the next batch might take longer to cook.
Keeping them warm
If you’re not serving them right away (or want to wait til the whole batch is cooked to bring them all out at once), keep the waffles warm in the oven.
Heat your oven to 200 degrees. Set a wire rack over a sheet pan and put it in the oven. As the waffles cook, stick them on the rack to stay warm and crisp.
Serve and enjoy
I like my waffles the old-fashioned way: with butter and good local maple syrup.
The finished waffles are crunchy on the outside, and soft and moist on the inside.
Enjoy!
