Gaufres de Liege in one hour (like waffle love waffles)

Gaufres de Liege (Real Belgian Waffles) in One Hour

Makes about 24 waffles. Meant to be eaten warm as a dessert with no toppings. This recipe makes a reasonably good facsimile of authentic Gaufres in only one hour using American ingredients.

Ingredients:

6 cups all-purpose flour

1½ cups butter (3 cubes)

2½ cups milk

2 eggs

2 Tbsp active dry yeast

¾ cup granulated sugar

1¾ cups pearl sugar (see alternative below*)

1 tsp liquid vanilla

½ tsp salt

Steps:

1. Soften butter: place 3 refrigerated cubes, unwrapped, in a circle on a plate and microwave for 30 seconds. Set butter aside.

2. Heat milk to lukewarm: about 2 minutes in microwave for refrigerated milk.

3. In a large bowl mix milk, vanilla, eggs, and yeast. Add 3 cups flour and mix until smooth.

4. Let mixture rise 15 minutes. Use the time to prepare pearl sugar if needed (see below).

5. Add butter, granulated sugar, and salt to mix. Briefly mix until butter is distributed, though it can still be chunky.

6. Add 3 cups flour and mix until dough is reasonably smooth. It should have a consistency somewhere between a batter and a bread dough.

7. Let dough rise 10 minutes. Plug in waffle iron so it has time to heat.

8. Gently stir pearl sugar into dough so as not to break up or dissolve the chunks.*

9. Cook in Belgian waffle iron, using ⅓-cup scoop of dough per waffle.**

* If you don’t have European-style pearl sugar, you can make a reasonable alternative as follows. Mix 1¾ cups regular granulated sugar with ¼ cup water in a flat casserole dish. Microwave for about 6 minutes, with stirring every couple minutes. Immediately remove from microwave and while liquid mixture is cooling and getting hard use a metal spatula to repeatedly scrape sides and bottom of dish and chop sugar mass into chocolate-chip-size chunks. It’s o.k. that some of the sugar will end up in non-chunk granulated form.

**Do not overcook. Waffles should come out of the iron golden brown, but soft and even a little gooey. The crust will harden as they cool, but interior should remain moist and soft. This requires less cooking time than for runny American waffle batters. Also, because the dough is thick and has sugar chunks, use a hot pad to press down and completely close the top of the iron after adding the dough.

You can top these with fruit, cream, nutella what ever you want.

Making these will make a mess out of your waffle iron.