Saturday, September 7, 2013

Waffle Saturday

Waffles with Unicorn & Flying Horse (I can't spell Pegasus .. Oh)
For years Saturday was pancake day. Then my parents gave us a waffle maker and since then it's Waffle Saturday. Waffles are not just for breakfast. They make quite a nice afternoon tea alternative to scones. I like waffles also because they don't have sugar in them, cinnamon is powerfully sweet in my experience.

My favourite waffle recipe comes from one of my favourite vegan recipe books, The Garden of Vegan by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer. It's the follow up to the masterful How it all Vegan. It's one of those great recipe books which shares stories from the authors' lives and some great vegan lifestyle stuff. As well as recipes for salads, mains, side dishes and desserts, How it All Vegan includes recipes for health and beauty products and a handy appendix of animal product ingredients. Both books are awesome, if you're at all interested in vegan cooking How it all Vegan is a great first book.

Sarah Kramer blogs at Go Vegan. Sarah Kramer also runs a cool shop called Sarah's Place which is down for maintenance at the moment with a message saying she is currently having chemotherapy for breast cancer, so yeah, any good thoughts you can put that way I'm sure would be really appreciated.

When vegan friends of mine have got cancer other friends have often commented something like, 'But they were vegan.' Kind of like when a really fit person has a heart attack. One of the best things I've read about vegans and cancer was written by Ginny Kisch Messina (MPH, RD) on her blog The Vegan R.D. This blog is one of the best sources of evidence-based information about nutrition and health. Ginny Messina has written about vegans and bone health, vegans and heart health, iron and she has some great stuff to say about nuts.

How it All Vegan was recommended to me by my friend Sarah (not Kramer) years ago while she was home from the States. I open it almost every other day and every Saturday because I can never remember a recipe, not even for waffles. This is the great thing about recipes and recipe books, I always remember the person who shared them with me. I always realise when I write this blog that so many good things have come to me via Sarah. She's awesome!

Anyway, I need to go and make waffles so I'll leave it there for today.

BANANA WAFFLES (Slightly adapted from The Garden of Vegan, Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer, p.40)

1 banana (bananas are a great egg replacer, half a banana will replace one egg in most baking)
1 cup of water
1 cup of soy milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup of rolled oats
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
(We often add seeds to this recipe, a teaspoon or so of linseeds or chia seeds (although watch these because they can add erm texture or sesame seeds or sunflower seeds. We also sometimes add chocolate chips, to balance things out baha) 

In a bowl I blend together, using my stick mixer (I think maybe this blog should be brought to you by my stick mixer, I use it so much) the banana and water until smooth.

Add remaining ingredients and blend until well combined.

Spoon about half cup lots of the mix into a well oiled, hot waffle iron. Repeat until batter is gone. Makes 4-8 waffles, depending.

I've replaced the flour with spelt and once I made buckwheat waffles. Here's a gluten-free waffle recipe from Naturally Attached which I've never made but it looks pretty good.


On top of waffles we have: maple syrup, raw fruit, cooked apples and berries, lemon and sugar, golden syrup. One of the newest vegan products I've come across lately is Coconut Bacon. That's right Coconut Bacon, there's a recipe over at Eating the Birdfood so you can make your own. Or Angel Food, a wonderful Auckland company has Smokonut. Angel Food is awesome people. Up until a wee while back they mainly imported vegan food products for sale here but now they've been concentrating on developing their own products here in New Zealand. At the moment they're running a crowd-funding appeal over at PledgeMe to try and fund the development of vegan meringues and cream - that's right.


2 comments :

  1. When all my kids are home, I make waffles EVERY Sunday - I even have a waffle-maker shaped like a PIG! (Get it? The only animals in our vegan breakfast are waffle pigs - HILARIOUS...)

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  2. I love the vegan RD - such a great website! And mmmm, waffles. We tend to eat more pancakes rather than waffles, don't know why. But you've given me the inspiration to bust it out again XOXO

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