Waffling for Mom

04 May Waffling for Mom

Borrowing a tip from my mom, we dump everything in the blender, quickly mix up the batter, and before long, we’re having hot homemade pancakes. We’ve made them so many times the recipe clipping tacked to the kitchen bul­letin board is tattered and torn, but not to worry, by now both Mike and our older daughter Mackenzie know it by heart.

Truth be told, Mike makes a lot more pancakes than I do, so much so that when our daughter Madi­son was little, enjoying pancakes at my parents’ house one morning, she told my parents that “Dad is the cooker in our house.”

I’m guessing this is because when the girls were younger, and I was trying to find my abs again, I was dutifully prying myself out of bed for a pre-dawn Pilates class, leaving Mike at home to feed them breakfast. What a godsend the IHOP pancake recipe was. They’d make them two or three times a week, often throwing in a secret ingredient and having me guess what it was when I got home.

Thankfully, even though both girls are now in school and it’s too hectic to escape for an early bird workout, Mike still fills in as the breakfast cook. He does a great job. I sure appreciate the morn­ings I get out of bed and smell the griddle already heating up and hear the whir of the blender mix­ing up his signature pancake bat­ter.

But waffles? We just don’t make them much at our house. (OK, I haven’t made them in years.) My mom, on the other hand, loves get­ting out her Mickey Mouse waffle iron when the girls are over and whipping up a batch of waffles.

One morning when I went to pick up Madison, she met me at the

Madison asked in astonishment.

“Actually, we have two waffle

With Belgians you have to separate the eggs, beat the whites, whisk the yolks, fold it together and bake them two at a time. It was all coming back to me. This was exactly why we make pancakes, why we’re a “pancake family” most days.

Nevertheless, I separated those eggs. I beat the whites.

I whisked the yolks. I dutiful­ly folded. I baked them two at a time in the Belgian waf­fle maker. And the girls loved them, those Belgian beauties covered in a blanket of whipped cream and fresh berries.

But there must be an easier way, I thought to myself the next day, wiping off waffle maker number 2, a heart­shaped number I’d bought back in my college days.

If you can make pancake batter in the blender, why not waffle batter? And off I went, filling the blender pitcher with wet waffle ingredients first and then blending it all together. And it worked, yielding crisp flavorful heart­shaped waffles sweetened with dried cherries and an added crunch of slivered almonds, almost as effortless as their easy, breezy pals, our beloved pancakes.

Just in time for Mother’s Day on Sunday I give you my Special of the Day: Let there be Waffles: Buttermilk Bel­gian Waffles and Cherry Almond Waffles, perfect for a breakfast in bed for Mom.