Ok so this was the third time I’ve tried to perfect this recipe and honestly, I think it’s perfect now. Of all the breakfast sweets (waffles, pancakes, french toast I guess), waffles obviously reign supreme. I haven’t made many at home in a long time, since I started being more health oriented, and I have been on the hunt for a semi-health-conscious recipe for some time. This recipe is also notable because it’s the first one I feel truly confident in my measurements, that someone else could replicate without me. I usually cook by *feeling*, and I struggle to get things written down. I end up messing with the taste so much even after noting that it’s almost impossible to even remember what I’ve done.
There was already a pretty good base recipe for these sweet potato pancakes. When I have a hankering for something new, first I google a couple of the main ingredients I want to use. This tells me if anyone else has thought of this before and usually of anything I should watch out for. I originally started with this one from (insert site) for the first iteration. It was a great base, but honestly a little lacking in the flavor department for us. It needed *something*, turns out that something was vanilla. I also wanted to use a little coconut flour for some fluff.
The second time we made these slightly runnier and didn’t remember until the very end that we actually had a waffle maker stowed beneath a few piles of old kitchenware. As I’m sure you know, this quarantine season has been great for getting your home in order, checking off projects that you’ve been putting off for a long time. It’s been some months since we joined our houses, and it was time to stop throwing pans in cabinets with reckless abandon and hoping for the best. In this latest cleaning spree, we found my long hidden waffle maker. Payton, upon finding it, jumped up and exclaimed “THE SWEET POTATO BATTER!”, so I was basically tied to the idea.
Waffles take a lot longer to make than you think. I’d always thought my waffle maker was broken, but actually I was just unwilling to wait the ten minutes per waffle required to cook one fully. This waffle maker has been in my life since 2015, I’m sure I’ve used it...maybe twice. But now I have someone in my life with just infinitely more patience than I could ever hope to have, someone willing to pour batter and wait….and wait….and wait...and not let me check….and wait, while I busied myself with 10 other things that needed doing, and then finally produce the perfect sweet potato waffle.
This waffle was served topped with some caramel that I’d made for a vegan cheesecake the night before. The caramel inside the cheesecake landed perfectly, but the excess I’d stored in a jar “cracked” or “broke” or whatever you call it when it recrystallizes. I pulled it out the morning of, dumped some more vegan butter, coconut milk, and maple syrup, and just kind of played with it until it came out the other side. This shit was good. But I don’t have a recipe. Perhaps at some point I’ll try to recreate it for a recipe in another post. I actually have the final bits still in the fridge, that I’ve turned into some vegan coffee creamer that I should also bring up later.
I make my potato puree in my instant pot by just cooking an unpeeled potato for 20 minutes. Surely there’s other ways to do this, I just don’t personally know of them. Just do whatever you’ve gotta do to get that potato cooked.
Payton has informed me that the steam emanating from the iron as it cooks is moisture cooking out of the waffle and that the waffle isn’t done until the steam slows. I have not fact checked this, but abiding by it seemed to produce spectacular waffles so I’m inclined to believe him.
*I PROMISE I will work on plating as I go along. Bear with me! The food is what’s important right now.
Wet Ingredients
1.5 cup sweet potato purée
.5 cup banana (or like 2 sweet potato and make up the rest in banana)
4 medium eggs or equivalent
.5 cup maple syrup
1 cup milk of your choice
Just like Vanilla
Dry Ingredients
1.5 c oat flour
.5 c coconut flour
4tsp baking powder
Some amount Cinnamon
Ground flax (optional)
coconut oil for oiling waffle iron
- Oil and preheat a waffle iron
- Beat the eggs if using chicken eggs
- Mix the all wet ingredients thoroughly
- In a separate, large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients to a homogenous powder.
- Slowly pour wet into dry ingredients, using hand mixer if available, but I’m pretty sure it would do just fine without. Batter should be thick but not crumbly.
- Scoop recommended amount of batter for your waffle iron into iron and close
- DON'T bother it for at least 5 minutes. If you open it and one side sticks to the lid, you were impatient. Wait longer next time. Close the lid, it’ll still cook.
Can also thin with milks to make pancakes!