Confessions of a waffle-challenged breakfast cook

Ya'll, I can cook breakfast. Eggs (how would you like them?), bacon, sausage of any type, pancakes, breakfast tacos, biscuits (oven-ready) - you name it. For a number of years the Anderson family cooked Saturday breakfast for about 250 people at church retreat. I can do breakfast!

But the lowly waffle has, once again, brought me to my knees. Let me start at the beginning.

When our daughter Julie was nine or ten, she had some friends over for a birthday slumber party; movies, popcorn, giggle all night, and Dad was going to cook waffles in the morning. The movies, popcorn and giggling went just fine. And breakfast turned out okay, because after destroying the waffle iron and covering the kitchen counter and floor with oozing, excess waffle juice, I gathered everybody up and took them to McDonalds. It took me the rest of the day to clean the waffle iron and kitchen. Really. And I made a vow, then and there, borrowed from Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians, who, standing thigh deep in snow waffle batter, said "I will make war with the white man waffles no more forever." Amen.

I blame what happened next on Rozanne, the family member who was in charge of Monday breakfast at the Lake Cabin on Labor Day. She served, among other wonderful breakfast goodies, sweet potato pancakes. I thought they were delicious, so recently we got a box of sweet potato pancake mix, and I made some, and they were also delicious. And I saw, on the back of the box, the recipe for sweet potato pancake waffles.

Barb orders waffles regularly at Fran's, and they are crisp and golden and perfectly formed and delicious, and I'm thinking as I stand there and look at the sweet potato pancake waffle recipe, "How hard can that be?" So instead of saying, "Hello, my name is Bob and I can't make waffles," I cast away my solemn vow like a Saturday night sinner, turned my back on who-knows how many years of sobriety and said,

"I'll make us some sweet potato pancake waffles for breakfast this morning."

Let me just say that Barb enjoyed breakfast, though if I were a true traditionalist we would have gone to McDonalds instead.

Yes, I ended up with a concrete-encased waffle iron and batter all over everywhere. Again. But I had half of the batter left, so I determined that I was going to keep trying until I got it right. I sand-blasted the original attempt off of the waffle plate thingys, cleaned them scrupulously, set the iron to its hottest setting and waited until a drop of water sizzled on the iron. I administered a liberal dose of cooking oil on the plates and brushed it thoroughly over all the little waffle hills and valleys. Yea, my waffle iron runneth over. Then I carefully poured out just the right amount of batter, closed the lid carefully and waited for the indicator light to go off.

Let me show you a picture:

You may not think it, but I count this a giant step forward. At least half the the waffle came off of the plates and it is golden brown! Okay, in some places. It is unfortunate that this batch literally dripped cooking oil, but that way I didn't have to butter them.

I've since done a great deal of research on the subject, and I have some tips that I'm going to use on my next batch. Just as soon as I clean the kitchen floor and Barb tells me where she hid the sweet potato waffle mix.