I grew up eating the deep pocketed square waffles that my mother made with buttermilk. They’re delicious with either whipped cream and strawberries or the more traditional maple syrup. Recently my mother gave me a waffle iron; its pockets aren’t as deep and it’s round, but it still makes a delicious waffle, especially using my mother’s recipe. She folds the egg whites into the batter after beating them to hard peaks – this gave me the idea to tryout a waffle recipe that would use up leftover egg whites from my ice cream experiments (see here and here for posted examples).

I also decided to make a slightly less standard waffle, so I used both buckwheat and whole wheat pastry flour in place of all-purpose flour. Regular whole wheat flour may work just as well here, but I can’t attest to that. I have a tendency to use more whole wheat pastry flour and since flour doesn’t keep forever I usually make do with the pastry variety. The change in flours results in a nutty, earthy waffle that was almost as light as the original, yet had some texture from the flakes of bran in the flours.

This batter makes exactly four waffles in my iron and that is definitely enough to serve two, so it should scale to serve more people easily. I suggest serving the waffles with a small pat of butter, some chopped toasted pecans, and some real grade B maple syrup. Why grade B? It is darker with a more intense flavor – I happen to prefer it to the lighter varieties.

Buckwheat Waffles

1/3 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 tbs evaporated cane syrup (or regular sugar)
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1/2 cup buttermilk (I used 1%)
1 tbs melted butter
2 egg whites

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. In another bowl beat the egg whites until they are just stiff peaks (it’s better that they are a little soft than over beaten). Mix the buttermilk and butter into the dry ingredients until just combined. Preheat the waffle iron.

Add 1/3 of the egg whites to the bowl and fold together quickly. When they egg white is mostly incorporated add the rest of the egg whites and fold in until there are no large streaks of egg white. Brush the hot iron with a little vegetable oil  and then cook the waffles per your iron’s instructions.

You can place the waffles in a single layer on a sheet pan in a 170 F oven to keep warm while you cook all of the batter. If you do this the waffles will be warm, but will not be crisp on the outside (tasty, just different). Serve with toasted pecans, butter, and maple syrup.