Ask CK: Are Your Waffles Supposed To Be This Bland?

New reader Christie writes in (edited slightly for length):

Hi Dan,

First wanted you to know that my family seriously loved both the crock pot beef stew and the risotto. I admit I had my doubts while making the risotto, it seemed like an awful lot of liquid. My husband kept looking at the rice and making comments. But by the end it was super creamy and delicious!

My experience with your waffles recipe was less overwhelming. The texture of the waffles was absolutely perfect, light and airy. They were however, to be blunt, bland. My four teenage boys (not seriously picky I might add) each had about one (a minuscule amount for a bunch of teenage boys) and I threw out about a 1/3 of the batter – unheard of in this household! Any suggestions to improve the taste? I’ve always used the “Classique Fare Belgian waffle mix” from my local Wegmans, and the taste is decent. I’ve never found another brand to taste as good. However they are not nearly as light and airy as yours, and are sometime downright soggy. So I’d love to perfect your recipe. What is missing? Vanilla? I’m not sure.

Christie makes a good point. CK's waffle recipe isn't sweetened or sugared up like many store-bought waffle products. Instead, our waffle recipe is mild. In fact, I consider it a vehicle for maple syrup more than anything else. This might explain why kids might not like it, unless of course they can dump a ton of maple syrup on top. And please, please don't tell me you used fake syrup with these waffles.

However, if you're looking to turn CK's waffle recipe into something with more "pop" and a more assertive flavor profile, here are some variations to try:

Cinnamon. Add 1/2 to 3/4 of a teaspoon to the dry ingredients.
Vanilla, as you suggest. A teaspoon should be enough. Add to the egg yolks/milk/oil.
Chocolate bits. Gently fold in 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup as you fold in the egg whites.
Cayenne pepper. Yes, cayenne pepper! Add 1/2 teaspoon to the dry ingredients.

Here at Casual Kitchen we sometimes add oats to the recipe too (about 1/3 cup--also be sure to add a little bit more milk to keep the liquid/solid ratio constant), or we will add a combination of the ideas above: oats+cinnamon; vanilla+chocolate, etc. Finally, fruit and whipped cream could be a tasty, if less healthy, option to consider too.

Readers, what suggestions do you have for jazzing up breakfast waffles? And if you try out any of the variations I've shared above, let me know your results!


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How to Modify a Recipe Part 2: The Six Rules

(If you haven’t read it already, please see Part 1 of this series first.)

In Part 1 we started with a concrete and simple example by going over a few basic modifications to my waffles recipe.

Today, we will go from the specific to the general. Allow me to share with you my six rules for effective recipe modifications:

1) Do It One Time By the Book
I rarely find it helpful to start changing up a recipe before I’ve even made it for the first time. You can't really change something for the better until you know where you're starting from. Otherwise, if the recipe's perfect as is, you'll never know, will you?

Also, keep in mind that you'll get a lot of fundamentally useful information by making the recipe "by the book" first. What was hard or easy about the recipe? Were there any extraneous steps you might be able to remove? What ingredients were truly important or unimportant to the final product? Unless you're clairvoyant, you won't be able to answer these questions without following the recipe verbatim at least once.

Of course if you ARE clairvoyant, you already know what I'm going to say for the rest of this post, so you don't need to read any further.

2) Know Where You CAN'T Make Changes
Keep in mind that some recipes just don't tolerate modifications very well, and some recipe ingredients simply cannot be tampered with. You'll find this to be especially true with baked goods, batters, cakes and breads, where you’ve got to hold the relationship between liquid and dry ingredients relatively constant--and you most certainly can't mess around with the leavening agents (baking powder, yeast, baking soda, etc). You can really screw up the chemistry if you’re not careful with this.

Recall in Part 1, where I suggest adding oats to the waffles recipe? I also told you to add an additional 1/8 to 1/4 cup of milk along with the oats, although I never told you why. Well, here's why: this keeps the ratio of liquid to dry ingredients roughly constant.

Note that this is an inexact science, and in the waffles recipe the ratio of oats (1/3 of a cup) and milk (1/8 to 1/4 cup) is not one to one. This is the type of thing you'll get a feel for as you experiment with modifications on your own.

Notice how this ties in to my rule to make the recipe by the book first. You need to have a feel for what the basic batter looks like before you can experiment with it!

And don’t get too rattled here with all of these restrictions I’m throwing at you on baked goods. Baked goods just don't tolerate modifications all that well. Most other dishes, like soups, sauces or casseroles, allow for much more experimentation and flexibility.

3) Spend Some Focused Time Thinking: What Would Make This Better?
This is a mental approach I want you to take after you’ve made the recipe for the first time. When you and your family sit down to sample a new recipe, just take a little bit of extra time while you’re eating to think about the taste. What do you like and don’t like about it? What additional spices or seasonings could go well with it?

Again, let's return to the waffles recipe. When I thought about potential modifications, it seemed like cinnamon might go along well with the real maple syrup. Also oats seemed like they might be a neat addition to mix up the texture. Hmmm, then maybe cinnamon AND oats, who knows?

You get the picture. This is how I encourage you to think to let your mind embrace new ideas. Perhaps you can even get your family into the same mode too--this is one way to create some quality family time around the dinner table--and who knows, maybe one of your kids will grow up to be the next Wolfgang Puck!

Of course this assumes that everybody keeps an open and constructive mindset. Hearing your family say things like, “Dad, this recipe sucks!” is NOT particularly helpful...

4) Are There any Superfluous Ingredients?
Note that with our waffles recipe, there are no unnecessary ingredients at all. But in some dishes there will be items that you can easily leave out while sacrificing nothing in taste or quality. We'll see an example of this in Part 3 when we walk through "before" and "after" versions of my granola recipe.

Of course an even better example of this is a recipe with a gross ingredient that you hate and you're dying to leave out. For example, I can tolerate raisins in my granola, but I can’t stand soggy raisins in any baked goods. Nothing grosses me out more than biting into a cinnamon roll or a muffin and finding a smushy raisin in there. So, that’s a no-brainer for me: I’ll just leave ‘em out.

5) What Would be Over the Top?
It’s important to know what kinds of ingredients can screw up a dish irrevocably if you overuse them. Here’s an illustrative example. If you double the amount of onions in a vegetable soup, does that really change the fundamental taste or format of the recipe? Uh, no. Not at all.

But if you double the amount of salt, or if you double the amount of Tabasco (heaven help your wimpy-palated dinner guests if you do this…), that will fundamentally change the taste of the recipe--probably for the worse.

So, I want you to be mindful of what types of ingredients (like onions) are additive, and what types of ingredients (like salt, Tabasco, as well as most other spices) are multiplicative. The latter are the kinds of ingredients that can easily ruin your dish if you overdo it. You might be risking an entire meal by "overexperimenting."

If there’s an ingredient or a spice you think you’d like to add but are concerned about going “over the top,” just be sure to make a less aggressive modification on the first try. Jot a note to yourself on the recipe about the change you made and whether you think it could use still more. By iterating this way, you'll perfect the recipe without risking a ruined dinner.

6) Believe in Evolution!
Start thinking of your recipes as living things. They can grow and mature along with your palate. They can change and iterate with your whims. Rarely do recipes come out perfectly formed and optimized for your tastes the first time you make them.

Take notes. Keep records. Leave room on your recipe cards for writing down your experiments and how they worked out. Record what changes you made and use those prior changes as a platform for future changes.

Your notes will help you remember where you left off with the last time (hmmmm… did I already double the Tabasco last time when it came out too spicy or did I plan to double it THIS time???), and they'll prevent you from repeating mistakes you've already made (eg: “cook the granola for 30 minutes, not 40, and be sure to stir it this time or it will burn!!”).

Of course, at some point a recipe might reach maturity--it gets to a point where you're totally happy with it and don't feel the need to make more changes. And to drag out the evolution metaphor still further, sometimes recipes go through a sort of punctuated equilibrium, where they see saw several steps of radical change over a very short period of time, but then remain pretty stable thereafter. My Chicken Mole is one such dish.

Look for more on this subject of modifications as we tackle more complex examples! Be sure to check back later for Part 3 of this series.

Related Posts:
How to Modify a Recipe Part 1: Basics
Waffles!
Fake Maple Syrup
An Easy Granola Recipe
An Ode to Tabasco Sauce

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by subscribing to my RSS feed, or submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon.

How to Modify a Recipe Part 1: Basics

Have you ever cooked a dish, and despite scrupulously following the recipe, decided later that the dish “needed something?” Do you have a favorite recipe that you really enjoy eating, but it has overly involved process steps that make it a pain in the ass to make? Or, was the recipe too expensive because it called for costly and potentially unneccesary ingredients?

Welcome to the world of recipe modification! No longer do you need to be a victim, mindlessly obeying the dictates of some know-it-all cookbook editor. Instead, this three-part series of posts on how to modify a recipe will teach you to call the shots in your own kitchen. My goal is threefold:

1) to help you learn to configure recipes to your needs and tastes,
2) to help you learn how to improve recipes so they taste even better or become easier to cook,
3) to help you develop improvisational and adaptive cooking skills to make cooking more fun and expressive.

Today, however, we’re going to start with the basics. And as in all educational things, it really helps to have concrete examples. Therefore, as a first step, I’ll share some rather simple examples of how I’ve modified my basic waffles recipe.

In Part 2, I’ll share with you my six rules for all recipe modifications. Then, in Part 3, I’ll share a more complex example where I’ll give you a before-and-after comparison of the pre-modification and the post-modification versions of my granola recipe so you can observe the entire modification thought process.

When we’re through this series, you’ll be an adaptive, free-wheeling cook, confidently bending recipes to your will and whims.

*********************
…but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet. :) We need to start at the start. So, if you haven’t already, please take a quick look back at the basic waffles* recipe. Next, take a look at these simple examples of modifications you can make to it:

1) Add 3/4 teaspoon of cinnamon to the dry ingredients.
2) Add 1/3 cup of oats to the dry ingredients (but add another 1/8 to 1/4 cup of milk to the liquid ingredients to compensate--we’ll talk about why in Part 2).
3) Instead of using 1 3/4 cups of sifted white flour, use 1 cup of white flour with 3/4 cup of wheat flour.
4) Add 1/2 cup chocolate bits to the batter (carefully stir in while you fold the egg whites into the liquid ingredients).
5) Add blueberries or other pieces of fruit to the batter (perhaps 1/2 a cup, give or take).

So far, this is nothing complicated, and perhaps you can already think of additional modifications beyond just this short list. If so, that’s great.

While you’re going through this process (and by this I mean before, during, and of course after you’ve sampled the recipe with your new modifications), I want you to be rolling these questions over in your mind:

1) Was this truly an improvement, or an un-improvement? (An "un-improvement" is Laura's term for when people make architecturally inappropriate changes to their homes)
2) What worked? What didn't work? Why didn’t it work?
3) What was the final form of the recipe and why was it better?

If you train yourself to think this way, you’ll instinctively begin to think of all recipes in terms of bending them to your will. Recipes won’t own you—you’ll own them. Before you know it, you’ll become a natural at improving, and improvising, on your cooking.

Keep in mind that this is only step one, and it’s a basic step at that. The goal here is to get your thinking pointed in the right direction. Check back soon for Part 2, where I’ll share my “six rules” for all recipe modifications!


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Fake Maple Syrup

I wrote a really positive post on Tabasco Sauce a few days ago, so in the interests of journalistic balance (and so I don’t seem like just another product flack), I decided to do a negative piece this time.

So today you’re going to read a piece condemning fake “syrup”.

A polemic. A denunciation, dripping with invective. A jeremiad. A screed, if you will.

Okay, so maybe you can tell by now that I, uh, don’t really like fake syrup. And it’s not just the taste. It’s more the phony-ness. The chemicals. The fact that we already get too much “high fructose corn syrup” in our diets as it is.

So to convince you, and to turn your stomach a little bit today, I’d like you to try a quick little exercise with me:

Let’s take a quick look at a highly typical phony syrup: Aunt Jemima. I’d like you to take a look at their “Original” syrup product page. After you go to that link, click where it says “Ingredients.”

Wow. Ewww. So this is what you are putting into your body when you eat this brownish-colored industrial goo:

INGREDIENTS: CORN SYRUP, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, WATER, CELLULOSE GUM, CARAMEL COLOR, SALT, SODIUM BENZOATE AND SORBIC ACID (PRESERVATIVES), ARTIFICIAL AND NATURAL FLAVORS, SODIUM HEXAMETAPHOSPHATE.

Do they think they are doing a good job selling the product by putting that information on their webpage? I’d call that some pretty suspect work from the marketing department. Most people (including me) can’t even pronounce “sodium hexametaphosphate” much less do we want to ingest it. PS: does anybody out there care to weigh in on what the heck that chemical actually does? Is it toxic?

Maybe the hardworking webmasters at The Quaker Oats Company should just stick with simple pictures of the bottle, a smiling drawing of Aunt Jemima’s face… and just leave out the nauseating ingredients part

This is why you should ONLY use real maple syrup in your home. It’s delicious, it’s actually a real product, it keeps nearly forever, and it doesn’t contain sodium hexametawhatever.

To learn more about pure maple syrups from New York State, I encourage you to start with the New York State Maple Producers Association website. They have a thorough list of syrup producers here.

And if you want to learn about different syrup grades, take a look here. Keep in mind that in addition to New York, Vermont and Pennsylvania are well-known and highly regarded maple syrup producing states.

PS: My personal favorite is the New York Grade A Dark Amber!


Related Topics:
Waffles!
An Ode To Tabasco Sauce