Saturday Lazy Fancy Breakfast: pumpkin spice waffles!

Menus locally are full of squash and pumpkin themed recipes. The fancy coffee seasonal drinks are often pumpkin spice themed. For some reason this made me decide to make fancy waffles this morning for family breakfast. Specifically "squash spice waffles topped with coconut cream and candied spiced pistachios" since that's what worked out with what is on hand.

Our waffle iron came with a recipe book and the "buttermilk waffle" recipe I've made a lot and can adjust amounts usually successfully. We almost never have buttermilk on hand so it's usually milk and vinegar.

Waffle batter ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons yellow corn meal
• 4 tablespoons white sugar
• 1 teaspoon and a pinch of baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups milk with 2 tablespoons vinegar. This is where I used powdered milk. But we've used basically any dairy or non-dairy milk. Make this early and set aside to let it curdle a little.
• 3 eggs lightly beaten
• 2/3 cup neutral oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 small delicata squash, puréed. We peeled ours, removed the innards and cut into about 1 centimeter cubes which we then steamed in the microwave and then mashed.
• Spices! This I did by eye ball mostly with whole spiced I then ground. Amounts approximately: 2 cinnamon sticks, 3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg (off a but), 1.5 teaspoons whole cloves, 1 teaspoon cardamom, 2 teaspoons allspice.

Steps:

1. Mix all dry ingredients including spices together well.
2. Cook and mash squash.
3. Make "buttermilk" by mixing vinegar into milk and setting aside for at least 5 minutes.
4. Whisk eggs and mix in oil and vinegar.
5. Heat waffle iron. Ours gets piled before each round.
6. Mix wet ingredients into dry and mix well but not over well. :)
7. Cool waffles on iron and stash in warm oven!

The toppings in the picture were pretty simple.

The coconut cream is some canned coconut cream mixed with "flax egg" using an immersion blender to try to get it to fluff. This didn't work but it still tasted good on the waffles.

The other topping is spiced candied pistachios. I made more of the spice mixture in the waffles. We lightly broke up about 3/4 cup of pistachios. Then in a cast iron pan with a little oil, I put the nuts in with a couple tablespoons of brown sugar. I let it start melting onto the buts, stirring often. Near the end I sprinkled the spices on (probably a good tablespoon or more of spice mixture) and stirred some more so it would stick to the sugar. Then turned out the nut mixture evenly onto a plate to cool.