Waffles: Fun Recipes for Every Meal [Hardcover]

What I love most about this book, is the author's efforts to move waffles into more meals of the day and to move them into the savory realm. I am looking forward to the cheese waffle sticks and the sourdough BLTs. The book was worth the cost just for the ideas.

However, if what you are looking for are recipes for making waffles that are crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and even remotely healthy for you, use recipes designed by anyone else (I recommend America's Test Kitchen, personally, but even a garden variety box mix will turn out better than the recipes in this book.) The proportions of wet-to-dry ingredients make batter thin enough for crepes. By contrast, a quality waffle recipe should create a batter that needs to be spread onto the waffle iron. 1.5 cups of milk to 1.5 cups of dry is entirely too wet; you end up with limp, steamed waffles. And while a multigrain waffle with an entire stick of butter in it may make a certain celebrity chef happy, no recipe for waffles ever needs a 1/2 cup of butter to 1.5 cups of flour - that's just madness.

My kids have recently decided that they like waffles, but I was getting tired of the standard chocolate chip flavor. So I was very curious when I saw that there was an entire book devoted to waffles - and, to be honest, trying to figure out how there could possibly be THAT many different options for waffles. I have to say, not only was I pleasantly surprised, but I now have this cookbook on my wishlist.

The sections in the book are as follows:

All About Waffles
Breakfast & Brunch
Lunch & Dinner
Dessert
Basic Recipes
Index

The All About Waffles section pretty much would be worth the cost of the book by itself. It gives general ideas of different ways waffles can be used, gives permission to freely mix and match flavors, talks about the key ingredients, different types of waffles and waffle irons, basics on how their made, tips & tricks, and even some waffle trivia! Chock full of excellent information.

Then come all the wonderful recipes - we tried the Oatmeal Waffles with Brown Sugar and Bananas...Oh. My. Goodness. Decadent. So delicious - they were awarded that ultimate compliment in our house - "That's a keeper!". There are 16 different recipes in the Breakfast & Brunch section alone, and I cannot find even ONE that I wouldn't happily make. Then comes the Lunch & Dinner section - 12 more recipes there. The Potato Waffles are on my list to try ASAP, as are the Sourdough Waffle BLTs. As for the dessert waffles, well...the name says it all! 11 more recipes likes Waffle S'mores, Raspberry Waffles with Lemon Sauce and Coconut-Rice Waffles with Mangoes and Lime Cream. I could happily eat waffles for breakfast, lunch AND dinner, particularly because they are so easy to make!

Having said that, these recipes do require a bit more work than the standard "throw a mix in a bowl with a few chocolate chips" kind of waffles, but the flavor is so well worth it, and they still end up being less work than many other meals. Plus, the novelty of eating waffles for dinner. Kids love that kind of stuff.

The last section is also extremely handy. It includes all the basic waffle batter recipes in one place, giving a handy reference for when you decide to step up and create your own flavor combinations!

Long story short - I cook a lot. I have a ton of cookbooks, and I have to rotate them out frequently as I find more that I like better. There are few that I tend to keep for a long time because they are so useful. This will end up being one of those that will be on the middle shelf with the most-often used cookbooks, once I get my own copy.

NOTE: This review is based off of an electronic galley provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an impartial review. I do not give 5-stars often, but I truly feel this book justifies such a rating.

Waffles are a particular favourite in many American homes yet for many people, both natives and tourists alike, the selection of waffles, toppings and fillings can be quite boring.

Maybe this book will help change that perception and broaden the reader's horizons. In many ways, waffles are like breads insofar that they can vary immensely in how they look and, of course, how they taste and you are not restricted to what you put on them.

Waffles need not, either, be limited to breakfast times. Savoury waffles can be used as for a dinner or appetiser, sweet waffles can make a dessert. You could even, if so desired, just dunk a waffle in a cup of coffee... but why you would want to do that...

All the book's recipes are based around several easy batters and the book even gives some advice to how these batters can be further customised. Who would have thought that you could add mashed potatoes into a batter mix! It is not something you might have normally done by in error and then enjoyed the mistake.

A number of primers are provided covering typical ingredients, waffle-making equipment, the art of waffle making and an interesting trivia section are provided as a prelude to the recipes themselves. Split simply into breakfast and brunch, lunch and dinner and dessert the recipes feature their own mini index.

For such a relatively small book, there are many recipes to keep you engaged and to get you thinking about experimentation in the future. Each recipe is well laid out, showing the ingredients list and detailed cooking instructions. A number of full-colour images give some examples of the tasty finished articles.

It is clear that the author has a very good imagination in order to make the waffle so versatile and feature in so many diverse recipes. It has not been a case of take a waffle and replace it where bread would otherwise feature.

You will probably not begin a waffle-rich diet on account of this book but should you enjoy waffles and enjoy trying something new, there will be a lot of things in this book to help you make your mealtimes a little different, in a positive way.