My Favorite Waffles & A Plan for 2022
Hint: it involves lots of Scandinavian food and probably some hygge too.
Back in 2018, Jarrod and I finally took the massive Scandinavian trip we’d been trying to take since we’d had to cancel that portion of our honeymoon in 2010. Everything about the trip was glorious, from the fjords in Norway to the churches in Estonia and the giant park in Helsinki.
And the food! Oh, the food. Fish soup. Squeezable tubes of cracker-topper. Real Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberry preserves. (Apparently Ikea does this right!) Danish pastries. Heck, we even got the chance to try reindeer and whale meats.
I returned with a new love an appreciation for Scandinavian food, and a desire to include more of it in my own life. Elaborate sandwiches for lunch, fika as an afternoon break. All of it. I found a promising cookbook online, The Scandi Kitchen, added it to my Amazon wishlist…and then forgot about the whole thing.
Until The Scandi Kitchen arrived at my doorstep this past July, as part of a “Christmas in July” box my sister sent the family. I flipped through it, both drooling…and defeated. It seemed like a lot of the recipes involved specialty ingredients, like rye flakes and Swedish cheese. I put it on the guest bedroom shelf and immediately forgot about it. Again.
Until I was clearing off the shelf this past week, in preparation for an in-law visit. I flipped through it more closely. I’ve recently become a huge breakfast porridge convert, thanks to Trim Healthy Mama, and this book has no less than four porridge variations. It also has pastries. Cookies. A waffle recipe. Instructions for sandwiches, and recipes for the bread with which to construct those sandwiches.
And so, with renewed vigor, I am ready to explore the world of Scandinavian cooking. And I have an idea. An awful idea. A wonderful, awful idea. (Sorry, we’ve been listening to a lot of Grinch around here.) I’m going to spend the whole year cooking recipes from the book.
Obviously I won’t just be cooking from the book the whole year. My family expects the usual tried-and-true meals! The masses may revolt. But! I can at least whip up one (or more!) recipe from the book each week. At the end of the year, I will be a master Scandi Kitchen cook. And ready to move on to the next cookbook on my shelf that I’ve neglected. Are you seeing the awful idea now? I have so many good, unexplored cookbooks. One year for each seems to be enough depth.
Sorry if that makes no sense. The caffeine is kicking in and I’m feeling loopy.
In the meantime, here’s the waffle recipe as promised. Since this post is running a bit late, I’m just linking to it. It’s not my recipe, after all. I will say, I halve the sugar in it and they come out great. The cardamom is really what does it. The Scandi Kitchen recipe also has cardamom, so I’m excited to see how they compare. Come back in 2022 and you’ll find out…
mins
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