Fail Up Friday: Waffle Cookies

Do you ever have those days when you try something and it’s a complete and utter flop… but you learn something from it? That’s failing up. And my new Fail Up Fridays series are a chance for me to share some of my utter flop moments with my readers.

Y’know… like that time my daughter and I tried to make cookies in a waffle iron.

Dubunking the Internets

I occasionally watch a YouTube channel hosted by Australian baker Ann Reardon called How to Cook That. I think she started her channel to demonstrate her next level baking and decorating skills, but what has started to capture the fascination of the web recently and seems to be lighting a fire under her subscriber base (at least reading into some of the comments she makes about the popularity of those types of videos) is her series on debunking cooking myths.

See, it turns out, the internet is not a uniformly noble and honest place. It turns out there are people of questionable moral character (gasp!) who post things that are provably untrue. I suppose this earns them short-term attention which can be mobilized into clicks and views and all those things that the unknowable artificial intelligences doling out advertising revenue seem to like. In short, people post crap because crap is easy and makes them money.

Countering this kind of misinformation are people like Ms. Reardon who leverage the power of good sense, knowledge of video trickery, and just simple, basic experimental evidence to demonstrate why things don’t work the way they are often portrayed online.

This is important, because even the most eagle-eyed among us are easily fooled by gimmicks and simple answers and quick fixes… and those things can be wasteful, destructive, and even dangerous.

Waffling on Facts

I’m pretty sure it was one of those kinds of dishonest “hacks” videos that germinated the seed of curiosity in my brain and made me think I could turn our electric waffle iron into a high-speed cookie baking machine.

Now, I’m not saying this will never work. I’m not saying you cannot cook cookie dough in a waffle iron and produce something resembling a waffle-shaped cookie. That said, pondering the science of baking and heat and logic, making a cookie in a waffle iron would likely require a very specific cookie dough with the right consistency of dough or batter, a particular quality of gluten development balanced with enough oil to crisp things up while not liquifying in the griddles of a waffle press. It could use some food science know how that exceeds my expertise as of yet.

It could be figured out tho.

It was just not as simple as the video we had watched implied. It was not as simple as squirting some refrigerated grocery-store cookie dough from a tube into a hot waffle iron and emerging victorious with a crisp, hot waffle cookie.

What emerged from my waffle iron instead is pictured above.

And the lessons learned , the failing up, was not to give up or that failure was the end, but rather for my daughter and I to try and understand why it didn’t work, what might make it work, how to look online for multiple sources of information confirming a method or idea, and (most importantly) how much work it can be to clean burnt cookie goop out of a waffle iron.

My recommendation, though, is to forget the waffle iron… that you’re better off cooking a monster skillet cookie in a cast iron pan anyhow.

Recipe: Cast Iron Campfire Waffles

Even far from an electrical socket, when I wake up in the woods I still have a few morning rituals. I need my hot cup of coffee brewed in one of a variety of ways: steeped, perked, or filtered. I usually try to eat a piece of fruit to start my day off right. And then I set out to cook a hearty breakfast for myself and the family.

Recently, and thanks to an amazing find at one of our local camping shops, that hearty breakfast has included fresh campfire waffles.

Yes, waffles. Over the campfire.

The easiest way to do set yourself up for campfire waffle success is by prepping some of your ingredients at home first.

In a plastic zip bag at home mix:

2 cups of flour
2 tablespoons of sugar
4 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt

In a bowl at your campsite mix:

1 bag of dry ingredients (as above)
2 eggs
1/3 cup of vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups of milk

Also, pack some extra oil for cooking and for caring for your waffle iron.

My waffle iron needs about five minutes to heat up over a cooking fire after you’ve oiled it. Having a grate or other surface to rest your iron on is useful.

When the iron is smoking hot (yes… literally smoking) open the iron wide (using heat-proof mitts) and add 1/3 cup of your waffle batter to one center of the grill plate. Close. Flip (and I do a gentle whirl to spread the batter out inside.) And return to the heat.

Add a bit more oil to the iron between waffles.

Figuring out when the waffle is done cooking without that handy beep of an electric iron is as much an art as a skill. Added to the complexity is that you’re cooking over a fire with irregular temperatures. Look for less steam. Look for visible doneness at the edges. Get a feel for the time it takes and be prepared to over/undercook your first couple waffles.

Then… serve. Hot. Add fruit. Syrup. Whatever you like.