Category: Vegetarian Dishes

Mennonite Waffles

Making waffles is a pretty straightforward business, assuming that you have a waffle iron and follow the recipe below. However, you should observe two common-sense rules when you make them.

RULE #1: Don’t put your hand into a hot waffle iron. Pam, my youngest sister, learned this the hard way when she was a little girl. “I also remember getting a bad burn when the top closed on my hand. Little fingers in the wrong spot. Mom told me it was hot but did I listen? NO.”

RULE #2: When beating the egg whites with an electric mixer, make sure that it is turned off before lifting the beater out of the bowl. The splotches on the pages of waffle recipes in our copy of the Mennonite Community Cookbook are mute but eloquent testimony to my once ignoring this rule.

A couple of years after we moved out to the country, we got a waffle iron. It was a round chrome machine with a thick cord and I think there was a thermometer in the middle of the lid that told you when it was hot enough to make waffles. Mom was probably the person who bought it, as she loved kitchen equipment from apple corers to lemon zesters. Dad was happy with Mom’s pancakes.

My sisters Barb and Patsy agree that we didn’t have waffles very often, but I think that my enjoyment of waffles and sausage for Sunday supper may stem from good memories of waffle suppers when I was a kid. I do remember that the waffles sometime stuck if you didn’t grease the iron properly and especially if you tried to take them out before they were done.

Today, of course, most waffle irons have non-stick coatings which virtually eliminate the sticking problem, and improvements in waffle iron design by 1969 when Jerri’s mother bought us our waffle iron made even the the metal grid machines like ours pretty trouble free. I miss the thermometer, but the “idiot light” that goes out when the waffle is done does mean fewer overcooked waffles.

Here is the recipe we use for waffles.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
2 T sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
6 T butter
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups milk

PROCEDURE:

The eggs and milk should be at room temperature. You can warm the eggs in a small bowl of warm water for a few minutes and heat the milk for a few seconds in a microwave. Melt the butter.

Turn on your waffle iron and follow any instructions for use that came with it. Start warming the maple syrup.

Sift the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Separate the eggs into two bowls. Beat the yolks until lemon colored and then beat them into the milk. Stir the milk and egg mixture into the flour until you have a smooth batter. Stir the butter into the batter.

Beat the egg whites until they are stiff but not dry. When you turn off the mixer and lift the beaters from the egg whites, you should see peaks with just a tiny curl on the top. Fold the egg whites into the batter with a spatula. Use the spatula to lift the batter over the egg whites, using a figure-eight motion until you have a light fluffy batter.

Bake the waffles and serve each one as it comes off the iron with butter, warm maple syrup. Bacon and breakfast sausage are delicious with waffles.

NOTES: You need butter to make waffles that taste like real waffles. If you merely want waffles that look like the real thing, you can buy them in the freezer section of your neighborhood market.

Jerri’s Cranberry Sauce and Relish

For the past twenty years or so, Jerri and I have been buying ten pounds of fresh cranberries each fall at marshes near Stone Lake. Wisconsin. Cranberries freeze well, so we measure three cups into quart freezer bags and in half an hour have a year’s supply of the luscious fruit. Before that we used to buy cranberries at the supermarket for our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, but this way we save some money, see some beautiful country and enjoy visiting with the people who sort, clean and sell the berries.

If you live in western or northern Wisconsin you might want to set aside a weekend next fall to attend one of the cranberry festivals celebrating the official state fruit and most important fruit crop in Wisconsin. The two nearest festivals that we have been to are at Stone Lake and Warrens. Both feature a weekend of activities which include tours of local marshes where you can buy fresh berries.

In the mid 1990’s, Wisconsin became the largest cranberry producer in the United States. Last year, Wisconsin cranberry growers sold 483 million pounds of the tart fruit, 60 percent of the total crop in the United States. Massachusetts, which once led the nation in cranberry production, was the second largest producer with 212.3 million pounds.

People like cranberries. Over 94 percent of Thanksgiving dinners include cranberry sauce, most in the form of jellied cranberry sauce sold in cans. Only five percent of cranberries are sold as fresh fruit, but once you taste your own cranberry sauce, my guess is that you will be making it again.

Canned cranberry sauce is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, which is cheaper than sugar because of farm subsidies. However, we think that sugar gives a better flavor, and I hope that you use it to make your own cranberry sauce this year.

Making cranberry sauce is easy. It takes less than fifteen minutes plus of course the time for the sauce to cool. Here is Jerri’s recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups cranberries, fresh or frozen
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups water

PROCEDURE:

Bring the sugar and water to a boil for about five minutes in a two quart saucepan. Add the berries and bring the mixture to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and cook the sauce until most of the cranberries have burst, stirring occasionally.

Remove the pan from the heat. Stir the sauce for a half minute or so and allow the sauce to cool. Transfer it to a serving dish or storage container and refrigerate before serving.

NOTES: Buying cranberries in bulk and freezing them in three cup packages makes it easy to enjoy cranberries in all seasons. Here are four good recipes.

First, here is one for an uncooked cranberry orange relish that Jerri makes at least a couple of times a year. It’s great with roast pork, lamb, turkey or chicken. Like her cranberry sauce recipe, this one also has just three ingredients.

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups fresh or frozen cranberries
1 orange
1 1/2 cups sugar

PROCEDURE:

Grind or chop the cranberries fairly fine. If we had a food processor, we would use that. Jerri chops the berries in smaller batches in the blender and chops the few by hand that keep bouncing around in the blender jar.

Wash and dry the orange and remove the zest with a zester or the smallest holes on a kitchen grater. Peel the orange, chop the sections into small pieces and discard any seeds with the rind. Stir the berries, zest, chopped orange and sugar together in a bowl. Put the relish in a storage container, cover and refrigerate for at least a day.

Delicious!

Here are three more recipes that are well worth your while.

Cranberry Apple Pie

Cranberry Crumb Coffee Cake

Cranberry Raisin Pie