Feb. 8: Plaid pancakes

I’m no food blogger, but I want to share a recipe I made up in my head. The last time I made waffles was not what anyone would call a success, but this attempt had a much better outcome. Don’t you love when your cooking WORKS? Unfortunately, I didn’t take pictures at each step because then you would have seen my messy kitchen and that would have made you sad.

I gave my recipe a fancy name to go with the fanciness of its fancy fanciness:

gaufres au chocolat

Ingredients:

• pancake mix
• water, cold
• vegetable oil (or canola oil or safflower oil or whatever kind of oil you want, I don’t care)
• Dutch baking cocoa
• confectioner’s sugar
• love

Have handy:

• Band-Aids
• Fire extinguisher
• Cereal

Directions:

1. Follow the recipe on the box for waffles and then throw in a little cocoa and about twice as much powdered sugar.
2. Forget the love. With that much powdered sugar you don’t need love.
3. Mix it all really well even though the box says it should be lumpy. The box is an asshole. If you leave it lumpy then there will be little white spots in your waffles and your kids will ask what the white spots are and when you tell them it’s just little nuggets of pancake mix they will not think that’s OK and they will put the waffles down and refuse to eat any more and then you’ll say FINE I WANTED THEM ALL ANYWAY YOU INGRATES and they will cry. Your kids are weeeeners.
4. Since you don’t have any cooking spray, make a half-assed attempt at spreading oil on the waffle iron. (Oh, I forgot to mention that you’ll need a waffle iron for this recipe. If you’re lucky, you didn’t ruin it the last time you made waffles.) It is really hard to spread oil on a waffle iron, BTW. You should get some cooking spray.
5. Pour the waffle batter on the waffle iron and close the lid. Hope for the best.
6. Watch Super Bowl pre-game stuff until you smell waffles burning.
7. Peel the waffles off the waffle iron with a spatula, which is only slightly effective. Burn your fingers repeatedly. Curse. Throw waffle on a plate and shove it at your kids because you blame them for all that’s wrong with the world. Well, your burnt fingers, anyway.
8. Repeat steps 5-7 until the batter’s all gone. It takes forever. Ugh. Whose idea was this?

The good thing is that, even after all that work, your gaufres au chocolat turn out beautifully:

Best enjoyed if you are temporarily blinded by the smoke of your kitchen’s flames.

Remember, it’s never too early to start drinking. So says Chef Jen.