Recipe: S'moreffles

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For background on this recipe, see the previous post.

This recipe comes to us from Lauren Pett, chocolatier and owner of Rich Chocolates. It was adapted from Nancy Silverton's Pastries from the La Brea Bakery.

For s'mores, you need marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers.

For s'moreffles, you need marshmallows, chocolate and graham cracker dough. Lauren recommends mini marshmallows.

The graham cracker dough can be made a day ahead of time. The dough is first waffled separately, and then the whole s'moreffle is briefly rewaffled to bring everything together.

Here's how to make s'moreffles.

Graham cracker dough

This recipe makes about a dozen 4-inch square waffled graham crackers. 

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour (or, 1 cup whole wheat, 1 cup all purpose flour)
• 1 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 7 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces, chilled
• 1/3 cup honey
• 5 tablespoons whole milk
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• Pinch of cinnamon

Directions:

1. Mix the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk the milk, honey and vanilla.

2. Add the butter to the dry ingredients and rub together (or pulse in food processor) until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal.

3. Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture until a dough forms. You may need to add a bit more flour, up to a half cup.

4. Wrap in plastic and chill for at least two hours, or overnight.

Bringing it all together: S'moreffles

1. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough so that it's just over a quarter of an inch thick. Punch out or cut out the dough into squares, about 4 inches on each side. (You may experiment with the thickness of the dough to suit your waffle iron. Similarly, the size and shape of the dough may be adjusted according to your waffle iron.)

2. Waffle the dough. Waffle iron heat varies; check the dough after about three minutes.

3. Set aside the waffled graham crackers.

4. When you are ready to assemble the s'moreffles, place one waffled graham cracker on the waffle iron and top with chocolate and marshmallows. Place another waffled graham cracker on top, close the waffle iron (you may not wish to close it all the way), and allow the heat to melt the chocolate and the marshmallows — about one minute.

Enjoy.

S'moreffles

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Lauren Pett is a chocolatier and the owner of Rich Chocolates & Candies in Chicago.

She was a Waffleizer backer from the start, although she did have two concerns:

1. She didn't own a waffle iron, and thus could not test any recipe she came up with, which led to concern No. 2 ...

2. The high probability of "comic meltiness" for her chosen recipe: s'moreffles.

"You come up with a recipe, I'll bring the waffle iron," I told her. "And don't worry about the comic meltiness."

A few weeks later I was at her doorstep with a waffle iron in a broken shopping bag. The bag had torn on the bus, and the waffle iron had fallen out. You don't really want to be that guy carrying a waffle iron on the bus, a point obvious enough from the start and then driven home as you watch it tumble out of the bag and onto the floor while you juggle your gloves, your transit pass and your dignity.

When I arrived at her kitchen, Lauren had already made the graham cracker dough. She rolled it and punched out a few squares.

She had already made the marshmallows, too.

Now, take a good look at these next photos. Because everything looks great — the graham cracker sandwiching the marshmallows and the chocolate, the dough settling between the ridges of the hot iron.

Three minutes later, it wasn't looking so great.

We spent the next 10 minutes scraping comic meltiness off the waffle iron and regrouping for the next attempt.

For the next try, we waffled the graham crackers separately.

Lauren lifted the waffles back onto the iron and carefully perched marshmallows and chocolate on the bottom layer.

This time, it worked.

She was kind enough to share the recipe. 

That's the next post.

* * * 

My thanks to Serious Eats, (with special love for the waffleburger), Unclutterer.com, Glamour.com, BuzzFeed, Gapers Block and many other blogs and Twitterers for taking note of Waffleizer.

I appreciate it.

Recipe: Twice-waffled bread pudding

This recipe is courtesy of Kim Schwenke, pastry chef at 312 Chicago. For background, read the previous post.

The components can be made ahead of time and waffled just before serving. Refrigerate the custard, rum-soaked raisins and maple-roasted pears. Store the waffles at room temperature in a sealed zip-top bag for up to two days.

Whole wheat waffles

Makes about six waffles (about 12 generous finished dessert portions)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cup milk
• 1/2 cup neutral oil (such as canola)
• 2 eggs, separated 

Directions:

1. Combine dry ingredients, stirring to mix well. In a separate bowl, combine all liquid ingredients except egg whites.

2. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, stirring until they're just combined. A few lumps are OK.

3. Whip the egg whites until they form soft peaks, then fold them into the batter.

* * * 

Custard

Ingredients:

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 2 cups half and half
• 6 large egg yolks
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt

Directions:

In a large bowl, whisk all ingredients together. Set this mixture aside.

* * * 

Rum-soaked raisins

Make a mixture of rum and water in equal proportions. Add raisins and bring the mixture to a boil. Allow to sit overnight to plump. 

 * * * 

Maple-roasted pears

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Peel and core the pears. Toss them in maple syrup. In a covered pan, roast until the pears are soft, then remove the cover and continue roasting until the syrup starts to caramelize.

* * * 

Bringing it all together: Twice-waffled bread pudding

1. Chop the waffles into pieces and place them in the bowl with the custard. Let soak about one hour.

2. Liberally grease the waffle iron with nonstick spray or butter.

3. With a ladle, gather the soaked waffle pieces, draining the excess custard back into the bowl. Pile these pieces into the waffle iron, arranging to cover the surface of the iron evenly.

4. Lightly cover the waffle pieces with the custard, about half a ladle's worth, distributed evenly.

5. Close the waffle iron lid and press down.

6. Check after about five minutes. Cooking time varies by waffle iron. The mixture will just start to caramelize and darken in some spots while others will be only golden brown or blond.

7. When there are as many dark spots as you can stand, carefully remove from the waffle iron: Use a silicone spatula to gently work under the bread pudding, loosening it all around before attempting to remove it.

8. Garnish with rum soaked raisins and maple-roasted pears. Serve with maple or vanilla gelato.

Twice-waffled bread pudding

I pushed through the revolving door, stomped the snow off my feet, and said: "I'm here to see Kim, in the kitchen."

It helped that there was a host standing at the entrance; I wasn't making an announcement to the room.

A few weeks before, I was a bit worried that Kim Schwenke had been buried under a pile of gingerbread rubble. 

A minute after I walked in, she appeared unscathed.

"Hey, Dan."

"Hi, Kim!"

It was really happening, and by "it" I mean the waffling blog and by happening I mean — no, I think that was fairly unambiguous. Let's focus on the "it."

Because there's a difference between having a blog in your head — not the kind of blog in your head where you silently post funny retorts to things that people said to you three weeks beforehand, but rather the kind of blog in your head where you actually intend for it to be on the Internet and read by people at some point, even as that point seems to stretch infinitely into the future as you lay the groundwork, round up collaborators, design the site and flirt with an all-waffled diet — and having a blog that someone else knows about. 

Where was I?

In the prep kitchen of 312 Chicago, where Kim is the pastry chef.

A small stack of whole-wheat waffles sat next to the waffle iron. Kim had worked ahead. Next to the waffles was a bowl of chocolate, two pounds of butter and at least two dozen eggs. 

I didn't know what they were for, but I liked that they were there.

Earlier, when I had proposed to Kim that she take part in this blog, she didn't hesitate. (I mean, why didn't she hesitate? I hesitated! I hesitated like hell. I went to bed with the idea for Waffleizer 10 times before I realized that it wasn't going to go away the next morning.) 

Once Kim was on board, it didn't take her long to settle on twice-waffled bread pudding, inspired in part by a recipe from the restaurant Otom. 

This is a bread pudding made from waffles, then prepared in the waffle iron.

I set down my notebook, grabbed my camera and watched Kim waffle.

There was something very satisfying about seeing the waffles get broken down into little geometric components, before seeing them reassembled in the waffle iron.

The waffle pieces get soaked in a custardy mixture of cream, half-and-half and eggs. Then the mixture gets placed in the waffle iron.

The first batch turned out a bit too wet, so we tried the next round with less of the custard. Kim packed in the waffle pieces and then drizzled some of the custard batter onto them before squeezing the lid closed.

Yes, a bunch of the custard came oozing out the sides. Yes, a few parts got burnt — mostly where the raisins were touching the iron. But we were on to something. 

She gave me a few tips.

"When you do it at home — you're going to do these at home right?" I nodded. "When you do it at home, soak it for longer. Maybe like an hour."

Kim coaxed the third batch from the waffle iron and a few minutes later, we were sampling the dessert in all its recursive, meta-waffle beauty. 

The waffle-custard concoction is only mildly sweet, making room on the palate for the maple-roasted pears, rum-soaked raisins and maple gelato with which Kim served this dish.

After the waffle was plated I headed upstairs and sat at the bar for lunch.

In the interest of full disclosure: I did not pay for my lunch, which consisted of two glasses of water, half a cup of soup and two-thirds of a panini. You would hope that if I were going to be influenced by a free lunch, it would consist of more than that. Because this is my blog and not a serious journalistic endeavor, I took the free meal. I'm pretty sure it didn't influence my impression of the waffling we had done downstairs, especially since the meal took place after the waffling and by that time I had already concluded that the waffling was awesome.

I should say: This one's a little tough to pull off. It's not easy to remove the waffled bread pudding from the waffle iron intact.

But it's worth trying. 

You can almost see how someone could make a blog out of recipes like this.

As long as he didn't overdo it.

Kim was kind enough to share the recipe.

That's the next post.