German Waffles
1/2 cup butter 1 cup powdered sugar 8 egg yolks 7/8 cup milk 2 cups Gold Medal flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt Gratings of lemon Cream the butter, add the sugar, beating to a cream; beat thoroughly. Sift the flour, salt and baking powder and add with the milk alternately; add the lemon peel.
A rich, sweet, yolk-heavy batter closer to a cookie dough than to modern breakfast waffle batter. The printed method leaves out a step, so read the points before you start.
- The missing instructionThe eight yolks are never mentioned in the method. Beat them into the creamed butter and sugar before the flour and milk go in, alternating dry and liquid as written.
- Powdered sugarIn this period powdered sugar generally means finely ground sugar rather than the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Either works here; superfine (caster) sugar is the closer match and creams well with butter.
- 7/8 cup milkThree-quarters cup plus two tablespoons. The batter should be thick and slow-pouring; add the last splash of milk only if it will not spread on the iron.
- Eight yolks and no whitesThe whites are not called for at all. Save them for meringue or an angel cake.
- The lemon"Gratings of lemon" means the zest of about one lemon, yellow part only. It is the only flavouring apart from butter, so do not skip it.
- The ironMost likely written for a heavy stovetop iron heated over a flame and turned by hand. In an electric iron use a medium setting; the high sugar content browns fast and will scorch on the darkest setting.
- Greasing and volumeEven a nonstick iron benefits from a light brush of butter for a batter this sweet. Use noticeably less batter per waffle than usual, as the baking powder gives a strong rise.
- Yield and servingRoughly eight to ten waffles from a standard iron. Sweet enough to serve as they are with a dusting of sugar, or with stewed fruit or whipped cream rather than syrup.
The Gold Medal Flour Cook Book was promotional literature from the Washburn-Crosby milling company of Minneapolis, the firm that later became General Mills, and its purpose was to put a branded sack of flour into American kitchens by way of reliable recipes. "German waffles" here may reflect the enormous German-speaking immigration to the upper Midwest, where the mills sat; the sweet, egg-rich, lemon-scented batter belongs to the Continental tradition of Waffeln served as a dessert or coffee cake rather than the leaner buttermilk breakfast waffle. Waffle irons of the period were hinged cast iron with long handles, set into a stove opening or held over coals and flipped halfway through. The name on such recipes usually indicates a style of batter rather than any specific regional German dish.