Banana Walnut Buttermilk Waffles

lolsuz's Note:

Soft, springy and moist, sweet with banana and with a crunch too. And almost as importantly- they're super easy to make. I developed this one over the weekend and I'd love to hear some feedback on it. If you're one of the millions of Americans who has a wedding-gift waffle iron sitting unused in a cabinet somewhere, you're going to kick yourself when you find out how EASY waffles are to make. I make mine most weekends and store the leftovers in the freezer... they heat in the toaster oven just like Eggo's do, but they're 100 times better than that Eggo garbage.

• Total Time: 9 mins
• Prep Time: 6 mins
• Cook Time: 3 mins

Ingredients:

Serves: 4-6

Yield: 4.0 8-inch ...

Dry ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 5 tablespoons dry buttermilk (I use Saco brand)
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt

Wet ingredients

• 1 2⁄3; cups water
• 1⁄3; cup vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 1 banana , mashed with a fork
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¾ cup walnut pieces

Directions:

1. Preheat your waffle iron. Always do this first so your iron is good and hot by the time your batter is ready, and you'll have perfect waffles from start to finish.
2. Measure all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and whisk to blend well.
3. In a large liquid measuring cup, measure the water up to the 1 2/3 cup mark, then pour the vegetable oil the rest of the way to the 2 cup mark. Add your eggs and blend well. Add the vanilla extract, mashed banana and walnut bits and stir again.
4. Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients, and stir just enough to blend out the lumps. Don't over-stir.
5. Brush your waffle iron plates with a little cooking oil. Pour a cup of batter onto the iron and close the lid. (You may need to use less than a cup, depending on the size of your iron of course.).
6. I'm using my mother's 40 year old Sears waffle iron, which makes a 9.5 inch square waffle. I set the temperature to just a bit darker than medium and set a timer to count down two and a half minutes just as I'm pouring the batter on the iron. A cup of batter on my iron yields an 8-inch round, four-way-split waffle. That's just a guideline if you have a large waffle iron; so many shapes and sizes are available and the perfect waffle on your waffle iron will require some tinkering with amounts, settings and timing.
7. If you can't find buttermilk powder, replace it with the same amount of flour and use milk instead of water as your main wet ingredient. The results won't be as elastic and springy, but it'll still be great. Of course you can always use real buttermilk, just remember to adjust the flour to make up for the lack of buttermilk powder. I've used leftover eggnog as the main liquid in this recipe and the resulting waffles were to DIE for -- and I despise eggnog!

Reviews

[Ransomed by Fire]

I made these today using milk with the added flour as you suggested. They had a really nice texture and were pretty good overall , and they were very easy to make. But I think they could have used a little sugar in the batter. (I don't think this would have mattered much if I had topped them with bananas and sweet whipped cream; but I didn't have any whipped cream.) I think next time I make them, I will experiment with substituting powdered sugar in place of the powdered milk.

[Chef #631601]

Excellent. Great with real maple syrup.