These Gluten-Free Waffles with Chocolate Satisfy the Kid in All of Us
The story of my life could be told in a series of waffle snapshots. I spent childhood weekends watching the lid of our Munsey waffle maker rise and fall as it chugged through a single square waffle at a time. Round, crispy-edged waffles on the DIY cafeteria station at Oberlin College brought me back to life after many sleep-deprived nights. The square waffles I make two-at-a-time for my kids on a shiny Villaware unit is proof that I now need to think about other people’s waffle needs as well as my own.
Throughout all that time, I never developed my own recipe. Getting the chance was overwhelming, like getting the keys to the car for the first time. I wanted my waffles to be everything to everyone. I thought about the chocolate waffles at De Maria. I thought about the gluten-free buckwheat waffles on Cookie and Kate, and I thought about how much I like waffles. What is a healthyish waffle, anyway? One with a fanned-out avocado on it? I wasn’t going to go there. I worked on all the other breakfast recipes in the Healthyish issue and put off the waffle recipe for as long as I could.
Once I started cooking, though, I had one of those moments where you see the waffle universe and your tiny place in it. It just made sense. Wet ingredients, dry ingredients. Just like the dog-eared recipe I cooked from in high school but with a more modern (and gluten-free) approach.
Dry: ground flaxseeds to give extra structure to the buckwheat flour, and as much cocoa as I could get away with without going bitter. Baking powder and soda. A generous amount of salt.
Wet: lots of virgin coconut oil to give moisture and richness, balancing the tannic, dry cocoa. Just enough brown sugar to balance the flavor but not so much that I would get in trouble. Eggs for lift and binding. Buttermilk for tanginess. Chocolate chunks, because I may not get another shot at this for a while.
The aroma of toasty cocoa-rich batter is the first thing that hits you, then out of the iron come super light yet intensely chocolatey waffles that manage to hold together until they reach your mouth. Nutty, rich, and savory. Something was wrong, though. However healthyish the waffle’s ingredients skewed, it still looked like a chocolate waffle. I needed a non-avocado topping that could bring it into the healthyish universe. Whipped ricotta and a super-fast buckwheat groat crumble (just groats, flax and sesame seeds tossed with a bit of maple syrup and toasted) took it there with creaminess and crunch. It’s the kind of recipe that makes me break out the All Clad four-waffle iron: Two is never enough.
Break out your waffle iron:
Gluten-Free Chocolate Buckwheat Waffles
