Adventures in waffle-making, part 2

I've become obsessed with waffles, as I am sure that every person in the history of the world who receives a waffle maker must be, in the beginning of their waffle-making career.

I love waffles, but I've only ever had plain waffles, at restaurants. While those waffles are amazing (there's a little diner in New Orleans--that I can't remember the name of, but I know my friend could, so if you want to know, let me know and I'll find out--that makes the best waffles in the whole wide world. Yes. Really.), they are plain, and probably contain about a stick of butter per waffle.

My vegan cookbooks have really neat waffle recipes that I've always wanted to try, and thanks to Santa, I now get to! Whee!!! Last week I made Lemon-Corn Waffles, which had an interesting texture due to the cornmeal, but didn't turn out that well. Likely because I didn't add enough batter to each waffle-well. Or whatever you call where you put the batter to cook.

Today, I made Ginger Pear Waffles. FYI, this is a recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. The link takes you to Recipezaar, but it's the exact same recipe. And, once again I de-veganized it by using regular milk instead of soy milk. Doesn't that sound great? I added some finely chopped crystalized ginger (which is one of mankind's greatest achievements, in my opinion), and used a red pear, since that's what I had. Now, a super cool thing about these waffles? They have only TWO, count 'em, TWO tablespoons of oil. Da-zam!! That's what I call low fat! (I did top them with a big ole pat of butter, but hey, I probably would have done that anyway, and if you are really being healthy and good, you don't have to do that)

These bad boys filled my house with the most amazing spicy smell! It didn't make me hungry, like some smells can, but did make me want to smell only this smell for the rest of my life.

Learning from previous mistakes, I added more batter to each well. As you can see, this made a bit of a mess.

I freaked out a bit at this point, but it was really too late to turn back. The strange thing is that I used to work at Ben and Jerry's, and we made waffle cones, which would make a mess that looked a lot like this. Apparently, I had forgotten that waffle making does make a bit of a mess. Anyway, when the waffles finished cooking, they looked AMAZING! You know, like waffles should look!

Eat up, friends!