Gingerbread waffles and puppies

 

My puppy eats chewing gum and teabags.  Which is to say old, spat-out chewing gum and used teabags which she picks up in the street because people are DISGUSTING.  I cannot get my head around anyone having sunk so low in heinous depravity as to spit their gum out IN PUBLIC ON PUBLIC SURFACES*.  The teabags are more arrrgh.  There’s a theory that teabags, or tea leaves, make a good mulch or fertilizer or cat deterrent or all three.  Lots of people put their teabags on their compost heaps, but some don’t bother with the middle stage but slap ’em straight on the ground round their plants.  Not I feel the most attractive option.**  One of the dreadfully bijou little terraced houses on the main street in the old part of New Arcadia, so neat and charming it makes your teeth hurt, nonetheless festoons the climbing whatever at its front door with old dead teabags.  Which Pavlova discovered a few days ago.  ARRRRRRRGH.

I thought I had dodged a bullet with Pav:  for a dog as maniacally food oriented as she is, she hasn’t been all that diabolic about bolting anything she can get her mouth around.  Unfortunately this happy phase appears to be over.  Today she nearly managed to swallow a shotgun casing before I got it away from her.  And while dried-up teabags are relatively trauma-free handling someone’s well masticated chewing gum is GROSS.

And now that you’re in the mood, I promised you a Gingerbread Waffle recipe.

Half a spoonful of instant coffee, more or less.  Your mileage may vary.  What you want is about half the amount of dry coffee as you’d need to make a smallish-average-ish sized mug of (wet) coffee.  You can also substitute (say) 1T of pure unsweetened cocoa powder or even grain coffee, if you have it around.  Dandelion is good because it’s got a pretty strong bitter taste.  This is not rocket science.  If I’m making you nervous, you can leave it out entirely.  What you’re trying to do is create a dark but faint background resonance for the spiciness:  someone biting into one of these waffles shouldn’t say, oh, coffee!  Or oh, chocolate!  Or oh, what?

2T to ¼ c dark brown sugar, depending on how sweet you like it.

¼ to ½ c dark molasses, ditto

2T melted butter

½ c boiling water or maybe a little more

1 egg

1 c flour, maybe about half basic white and the other half as takes your fancy.  Whole wheat/wholemeal is always good.  So is rye.  So is oatmeal ground to flour.  I have a thing for barley flour.  The original recipe called for 1c unbleached white.  My default is ½ c wholemeal,*** ¼ c unbleached white and ¼ c barley.

1 tsp baking power

½ tsp baking soda

Pinch salt

1 tsp (ground) ginger

¼ tsp (ground) cloves

1 tsp (ground) cinnamon

If you’re a nut person, a few chopped walnuts or pecans are good

Pour the boiling water over the drink powder of choice, if any.  Dissolve, then add the butter, sugar and molasses.  Mix the dry ingredients.  Beat egg well while the previous cools off a little, then stir in.  Stir in the dry ingredients pretty quickly, like making muffin batter.  You want a thinnish but still gloopy batter.  If you’ve made waffles before you know what I mean.†  If to achieve thin but gloopy you need to add a little more water, do so.

You have, of course, remembered to turn your waffle iron on while you were putting the batter together, so it’s now all hot and ready for you.  Unless it’s non-stick, don’t forget to oil it.

Serve whatever you usually serve with your waffles.  I personally feel you never go wrong with maple syrup.  You can also raise the amount of sugar by 2T or so, call it dessert, and serve with ice cream.

I’m sure Pavlova would love these.

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* http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/the-cognitive-benefits-of-chewing-gum/

It may just be my monitor, but I had to scroll waaaaaay down to get to the article.  Clearly the scum on legs that expectorates its chewing gum on pedestrian pavements or in the grass in churchyards are past the twenty-minute intelligence boost.

** I, who of course scorn teabags with a disdain Lady Bracknell would admire, did try tea leaves as a cat deterrent at Third House.  My impression is that cats would prefer not to spend their quality time in the immediate vicinity of fresh tea leaves . . . but there’s plenty of room in the rest of the garden and the effect, whatever it is, wears off in a few days.  Even I didn’t drink enough tea to keep the entire garden covered in tea leaves.  I also wondered what regular applications might eventually do to the pH of my soil.  Not collecting and spreading tea leaves then became something I gladly spent no more time on.  Although if it frelling blistered the frelling cats it would have been worth it.

*** Or preferably spelt, which is a variety of ancient wheat that may upset easily upsettable digestions less than modern wheat.  I also think it tastes nicer.  You can increasingly find white spelt as well as wholemeal too.  Yaaay.

† If you haven’t, you need practise, so you’d better get on with it.