Cooking with Sam: The Waffle Experiment

My friend Nell gave me a waffle maker (she's giving away items because of an upcoming move and she's also generous) and even though I'd never made waffles in my life, I accepted because, like most humans with taste buds, I like waffles. Of course I didn't tell Gideon this before trying to use the waffle maker so that my life could better resemble a sitcom.

I started where everyone starts: by searching "waffle mix for dummies" on Google. I chose this recipe, mostly because we have all the ingredients but also because it's the first recipe that popped up and I am lazy.

The ingredients are:

1. 2 eggs
2. 2 cups of all-purpose flour
3.  1 3/4 cups of milk
4. 1/2 cup vegetable oil
5. 1 tablespoon white sugar
6. 4 teaspoons baking powder
7. 1/4 teaspoon salt
8. 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Ed. Note: I tried to write the recipe list in AP style with all numbers below 10 spelled out but then I started writing fractions and realized that my silly journalism training has absolutely not set me up for food blogging. Hang in there with me, guys.

First, I whisked up the eggs in a bowl. This was easy because I have arms and a brain. 

And then I screwed up. The recipe says to mix all the other crap in once you have beaten the eggs, but I thought it meant individually and started with the flour. My god, guys, never do this. Your whisk is not a flour-egg birdcage, and it doesn't appreciate being treated as such.

In an effort to quickly fix my error, I haphazardly mixed in the other wet ingredients until it resembled something slightly fluid. This was good, I thought, since I needed a batter to create these waffles. 

Having strongly overestimated how long it would take me to produce the batter, I refrigerated it and ate one of those Flintstones sherbet push pops while watching Love It or List It. Gideon arrived home an hour or so later, and I looked way more prepared than the housewife I was trying to be.

I momentarily considered adding chocolate chips to the batter but who was I kidding? I'm not Martha Stewart; I can't make a meal as complex as chocolate chip waffles. 

The next part involves the actual waffle iron, which took me 30 minutes to figure out. There's a very dark, very camouflaged switch you have to flip for the thing to start heating up. It took me a while. 

I found the waffle-making process so fascinating that I completely ruined the waffles. Every two minutes, I couldn't help but peek at how the waffles were cooking only to lift one part of the waffle away. My finished plate of waffles looked like the torture room in a waffle serial killer's home. So many broken parts, guys. So many. 

In conclusion, the waffles were delicious. I would have taken a photo of them all dressed up in syrup and peanut butter but didn't want to share how much syrup I actually ate.