Brussels waffles

Nederlands: https://demaanboom.org/2019/11/30/brusselse-wafels/

Hi! I’m back!

You’ve certainly heard about waffles and the best waffles there are: Liègois and Brussels waffles. In this post, I won’t discuss the difference between the two, but I’ll share some wonderful memories. Memories linked to the family recipe of the Brussels waffles. You can find the recipe below the text.

My first and most warm memories about this crunchy and airy dessert go back till the time when I was a year or eight (or maybe younger). Every Christmas Eve, my grandparents of my mother’s side came celebrating at our home. For me, the party started already on the 6th of December (Sinterklaas in Belgium) on which my brothers and me received many presents of the “good man”. In the morning piles of toys were displayed in the eating room and they were ready to get played with. That was the start of the magical month of December.

After that there were the glorious days on which the streets got filled with shiny lights and stars, and when we drove through the streets in the evening, in every living room a warm gloom and a Christmas tree welcomed us. Sometimes I joined my father to go and choose a tree. And the day my mother got the Christmas ornaments of the attic, we decorated the house together. We used to have the most beautiful tree in the whole village (in my opinion). On Christmas Eve, the tension mounted high when my grandfather drove his car on to the porch and when I saw my grandmother get out with a huuuuge laundry basked filled with gifts.

For our first gift, which was carefully wrapped and labelled, we had to sing a song or perform a little theatre. Grandmother always brought the most original gifts and we all watched Zorro (my grandfather insisted on that). After the film, the meal consisting of Brussels waffles started. It seemed as if there were hundreds of them on the table. Piles and piles and piles of waffles and little bowls of melted chocolate sauce and whipped cream and fruit from conserves (the syrup, we had already carefully shared among us).

For me, waffles are a nice and cosy atmosphere, a feeling that I want to share with others. And there isn’t a lot that is able to stop me from sharing that feeling. For example, with my students.

At the end of a module, I like to bring waffles to make our “last moment together” more fun. One time, I even went further. Then I took all cooking materials and the ingredients to the classroom. With dialogue cards, the students first had to buy their ingredients (we played shopkeeper) and with the recipe, they made the waffles their selves. Hysteria when we discovered that almost nobody was able to cook and only three of the fifteen (adult!!) present people had enough courage to take up the role as chef. The classroom quickly filled with aromas from which the saliva comes in your mouth and you’ll be drooling around. It was quite a task to aerate the room. (It was an evening class in the rooms of a secondary school, so we had to watch out not to disturb the relationship with the normal teachers).

The students were still very enthusiast afterwards. Some became good friends, I discovered recently. It is always nice to hear that profound relationships and friendships are formed in my classes.

But now back to the recipe. You’ll see that I add sparkling water. There are some discussions about that. One of my aunts replaces it by milk. But I am convinced it makes the waffles extra airy!

+- 50 pieces

• 1kg self-raising flour
• 8 eggs
• 1/5 kg solo (or real butter)
• 2 little bags of vanilla sugar
• 1 l milk
• 1 l sparkling water
• some oil

Let the butter melt with half a litre of milk and let cool. Add the rest of the milk. Mix the egg yolks inside; add the flour (sifted); add the sugar; beat the egg white until stiff and carefully fold into the mixture; add a dash of oil; add the sparkling water

Bake in a waffle iron that is very hot

After the baking, you can make the waffle sweet by adding sugar (powdered sugar, brown or light brown sugar, whipped cream or something else). Now you have a great delicacy!