Recipe: Mouth-Watering Waffles

Two days ago our friends, the Sabers, stayed the night with us on their way up the shore for a weekend of camping. Their little Aria turned two a month ago and is as cute as can be with her dark pigtails and detailed-but-not-quite-distinguishable stories. After Pete finished work for the night, we went to The Brewhouse for dinner. Yum. This was our first time there since we've been back in town. It's so classically Duluth. Good beer, really great burgers, and often there's some variation of live acoustic entertainment. Ella ate her first few french fries that night while Aria tried drinking the ketchup. It was so good to catch up with friends and relax in a place we love.

Since the Sabers stayed over night, I wanted to come up with something good for breakfast. My ingredients were not plentiful. That's mostly because (if you caught my post a week ago) I'm not baking this month. I only had a few eggs and very little butter. However, I did manage to scrape enough stuff together to mix up a small batch of waffles. I jumped on to allrecipes.com for a little advice and found a highly rated, few-ingredients-needed recipe. I mixed up the batter, warmed up the flip iron we got for Christmas (like the ones they have at hotel breakfasts. so fun.), and made up a little breakfast. I did end up adding to the recipe to give some extra flavor (more vanilla & a little cinnamon) so I've included it in the recipe below.

Side note: This whole not baking thing is getting a little easier. It was really hard the first week, but now that most of my friends know of my vow, I'm doing just fine. This round of P90X is awesome so far. I always love the very beginning when I see a few small immediate changes, but then I usually have to wait another month or more to see anything else happen. The really hard stuff doesn't kick in till after day 60 when I'm tired of the whole thing and just want to do whatever I feel like doing. Always good results, though. What would I do without it? Probably nothing. Ha.

So here's the waffle recipe.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups warm milk
1/3 cup butter, melted
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons cinnamon

1. In a medium bowl, mix together flour, salt, baking powder and sugar; set aside. Preheat waffle iron to desired temperature. I set mine at medium and baked each waffle for 2 mins.
   
2. In the bowl of a stand-up mixer (or just another big bowl if you don't have one) beat the eggs for about 30 seconds. Stir in the milk, butter, vanilla and cinnamon. With the mixer set on low (or while stirring) slowly add the flour mixture until the batter is well combined. Don't over mix.
   
3. Grease the waffle iron before pouring the batter onto the center of the iron. Cook the waffles until golden and crisp. Serve immediately with plenty of warm syrup or berries and whipped cream.

Oh, and making waffles doesn't count as baking. Just so you know.

Enjoy!