C'est Belge

A couple weeks ago, I joined a few friends in partaking of the 'liege' waffles at a place in town called Bruges. The Belgian fries were very tasty with lemon pepper dill mayonnaise, and the waffles were pretty good. I would have to say, though, that the waffles, while sweet and crunchy, were kind of heavy, and you could taste the yeast. I covered it up with the chocolate (de-lish!) for most of the waffle, but my ultimate conclusion was that I could probably create something similar that tasted better and for much cheaper. (I must be pretty full of myself, I realize.)

So I did what any woman with an important mission would do...I googled. What I found was this recipe. And I don't just have pearl sugar laying around my house, so I had to purchase some online. Done.

Last night was the debut of my very own gauffres liege.

Ta da!



I was nervous, but they turned out fantastically and were entirely scrumptious. My waffle iron is covered in melted sugar, but it was worth it.

Because the one online was in metric weights and most people don't own a food scale the weighs things in grams, here's the recipe:

Belgian Sugar Waffles
3 1/2 cups flour
1 packet dry yeast
3/4 cup lukewarm milk
8 oz softened butter (2 sticks)
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
8 oz pearl sugar (I bought Lars Imported Belgian Pearl Sugar)

Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm milk. Gradually add all ingredients to the flour, except the pearl sugar. Mix dough for 1o minutes and then let rise for 30 minutes (until double in size). Add the pearl sugar and let rest for 5 minutes. Drop by 1/4 cup portions onto a hot, well-greased waffle iron and bake.

Note: The melted sugar will be really hot, so be careful when handling the finished waffles.

Serving suggestions: Serve with melted chocolate, powdered sugar, fruit, nutella, caramel, or whipped cream. These are also great plain.

As leftovers: I froze the unused waffles and warmed one up on the waffle iron this morning. It was still quite delicious, but definitely not the same as the fresh ones. Moral of the story: invite enough people over to eat all of these when they're hot off the presses!