Belgian Waffles

adapted from Simple Daily Recipes

INGREDIENTS
2 eggs, room temp
1 cup milk
4 Tbsp oil
2 tsp butter vanilla baking emulsion
1 cup cake flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 Tbsp sugar

DIRECTIONS

Separate the yolk from the whites of your room temperature eggs.

Combine yolks with milk, oil, and vanilla emulsion. Beat until combined. Set aside.

In a clean metal or glass bowl, whip egg whites until stiff peak stage. A KitchenAid is your best friend for this. Reserve one quarter cup of stiff egg whites.

Turn on waffle maker to let it come to temperature.

In a medium sized bowl, thoroughly combine flour, baking powder, kosher salt, and sugar. Whisk in your wet ingredients, until mixture is homogenous. Slacken batter with 1/4 of egg whites, then carefully fold in the rest.

Fill waffle iron according to the directions, and bake in iron until it has reached the desired color. No one likes to clean up the mess of an overfilled waffle iron.

When you have approximately 1/4 of your batter remaining, gently fold in the remaining quarter cup of stiff egg whites. The last bit of batter is never quite as fluffy as the begging of the batch, and this has prevented me from having the dreaded waffle iron mess.

Serve with your favorite waffle toppings, and enjoy!

Ever have those moments when you see something that would make all of your childhood dreams come true, but you recognize that you're an adult and don't actually need that dream to come true? Well that was me with this Mickey Mouse Waffle Maker… and I resisted, until they came back in stock and my favorite Disney Instagrammer was like, "they're baaaaack!" Well friends, I don't regret the decision because this waffle iron has several settings, and a super even heating element. It's just pure quality… especially with this waffle recipe.
I didn't take very long searching for the perfect recipe. And then I was committed to making waffles, even though we didn't have regular flour OR vanilla extract, but the adjustments to the recipe are now necessary. Cake flour is a little sweeter, and much lighter, and Butter Vanilla Baking Emulsion is HEAVEN SENT. The trick of setting aside some of the stiff egg whites has also been loads of help, because the batter tends to be denser, and will just ooze out like lava if you don't have set it aside to add later.

CCC: Small Batch Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from No. 2 Pencil
INGREDIENTS

2 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
2 Tbsp brown sugar, firmly packed
1 Tbsp granulated sugar
Pinch of kosher salt
¼ tsp pure vanilla extract
1 large egg yolk
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
Mini semisweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350ºF.
Prepare baking sheet with parchment paper or silicone mat.
In a small bowl, blend butter, sugars, salt, and vanilla together with a tiny whisk, or a fork.
Add egg yolk and stir again.
Add baking soda and flour and stir until combined.
Then stir in mini chocolate chips until you feel like there are enough.
Scoop dough, and place on baking sheet at least two inches apart.
Bake for about 8 minutes, or until edges are golden brown.
Remove baking sheet from oven and give the baking sheet a firm, but careful bang on the counter top. This will deflate the cookies and give them a perfect wrinkly appearance.

My grandmother once told me that "Lazy" should be my middle name. Joke is on her because my middle name is HER middle name. But she's right, because I am a lazy baker. I love baking, but sometimes I just can not. Cookies cause this laziness to come up to the surface. You make the dough, bake a couple sheets, and then you still have a crap ton of dough. It's like the song that never ends, and sometimes my hand gets crampy from all the scoopin'. This recipe is perfect for my lazy baker heart. It yields six cookies, and they all fit on one cookie sheet. It's not a holy grail recipe by any means- as in I'm not going to only use this recipe. BUT when the craving for a chocolate chip cookie comes, and there isn't any cookie dough in the freezer, and you don't feel like baking batch after batch in the oven, this recipe is a definite go to.