French Fridays with Dorie - Waffles & Cream with Homemade Egg Liqueur

Today´s recipe for the French Fridays with Dorie group is Waffles & Cream – Dorie´s recipe is a really good recipe for delicious waffles, specially for one of those fancy waffle irons. You'll need a waffle iron to make these warm, crispy waffles.

If you wanted to describe a waffle, you could say that it is a „batter baked between two hot irons marked with indentations, producing a crisp plain cake or flatbread with deep ridges on each side and a soft aerated interior“ (DL) – sounds rather amusing but I love that description.

Waffles are typically served with butter, maple syrup or other sweet or even savory toppings. Typical ingredients for the waffle batter include wheat flour, butter, milk, salt, sugar and egg.

When making homemade waffles, it is always important to remember not to over-enrich the batter with too much fat, sugar or egg as the waffles can color too quickly and turn soft soon after baking. As a rule, you should use plain flour rather than bread flour to help produce a light and crisp result and keep egg, sugar and cream to a minimum. The toppings used will accentuate the sweet or savory characteristics of the waffle.

We live in a country of devoted waffle lovers. Therefore, I own serveral waffle irons, for very pretty heart-shaped or shell-shaped waffles. I also count a rather fancy Belgian waffle maker among my true kitchen treasures. I love my waffle irons – if you haven’t got one, put it on your birthday wishlist!

We usually eat waffles in the afternoon, dusted with confectioners´ sugar and may be some lightly whipped cream on the side. Never as a breakfast meal. When we visit the Netherlands or Belgium, there is always the aroma of freshly-baked waffles in the air – you can order them all day long at coffee shops and cafés and specialty food trucks and choose between plain ones or the ones with cream and fruits piled high, or warm chocolate or caramel sauce. Always such a treat.

And classically, Belgian-style waffles are yeasted waffles, they are crispy on the outside and soft and light on the inside. We love the yeasty flavors and aroma.

Dorie´s recipe also hails from a Belgian chef living in Paris. This is a recipe with only a few ingredients, namely butter, milk, flour, sugar, salt, vanilla and egg whites – alas, no yeast in sight. Still delicious and very easy to whip up.

And even more wonderful when served with softly-whipped cream as well as some Homemade Egg Liqueur (Eierlikör) that I made this morning. In Germany, egg liqueur is mostly consumed during Easter and Christmas, but available year-round.  It has a rich, creamy, custard-like flavor and makes a great topping for everything from ice cream to rice puddings, vanilla custards and can also be used in preparing cakes. Eierlikör tastes best right out of the fridge and when kept there, stays good for a few weeks.

Vanilla Egg Liqueur – Vanille-Eierlikör
(for all those adult taste testers)

Ingredients
(Makes 500 ml)

• 5 very fresh egg yolks, use M or L (buy the very best organic eggs you can find) 
• 125 gram confectioners´ sugar (sifted)
• a pinch of fine sea salt
• one fresh vanilla bean (preferably a Madagascar vanilla bean)
• 100 ml vodka (or rum)
• 200 grams cream or half-and-half 

Preparation

1. Sterilize the bottle that you are using to store the egg liqueur.
2. In the bowl of your mixer add the egg yolks, the confectioners´sugar and the salt and mix on high speed for about ten minutes. - NOTE: you can use the egg whites to bake my Coconut Easter Lamb Cake, for my recipe, please go here.
3. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean and add the scraped seeds to the egg mixture together with the vodka (or rum) and cream.- NOTE: make sure to keep the scraped vanilla bean to make Homemade Vanilla Sugar, for my recipe, please go here.
4. Mix for another ten minutes and laddle into to prepared bottle (or use a suitable funnel).
5. Refrigerate overnight for best taste - NOTE: Egg liqueur doesn’t keep as well as most other liqueurs do. Keep an unopened bottle no longer than a few months and make sure to consume an opened bottle as quickly as possible. Once opened, store in the fridge.

Waffles are always a huge hit at our house - these were no exception - served dusted with confectioners´ sugar and whipped cream to the younger and very eager taste testers and for the adult ones with a bit of that Homemade Egg Liqueur. What a treat on a Friday afternoon during Easter vacation. In general, frozen waffles are easy to use as they can be placed in the toaster and simply reheated (unless, of course, they come with a wooden stick attached and unless, of course, you never ever have leftover waffles).

I wish to take this opportunity to wish all my readers a Very Happy Easter! - Frohe Ostern! - Joyeuses Pâques!

To see whether the other members of the French Fridays with Dorie group enjoyed this week´s recipe, please go here.

For copyright reasons, we do not publish the recipes from the book. But you can find the recipe for the Waffles & Cream on pages 416-17 in Dorie Greenspan´s cookbook "Around my French Table".