I <3 Brinner: The Beer Waffles Edition

Remember Scrubs Season 7, Episode 7? You know, the one with Brinner? Mmmm, breakfast for dinner.

We do brinner fairly often around here, especially since I like breakfast foods but cannot eat very much in the morning. When we have waffles, it’s most often for dinner or brunch on the weekends. I once promised some friends I’d make them beer pancakes. I much prefer the waffle to the pancake, so I’ve decided to start trying out various beer batter recipes. Tonight’s was adapted from a recipe that I’ve since lost the source for, but it was a british one and so had to be converted.

A few notes on this round:
I was out of honey so I used granulated sugar, which worked fine. All we had was PBR so I imagine it would be even better with a good beer.  I used Earth Balance margarine instead of butter, vanilla almond milk instead of milk (and also omitted the vanilla). I used Ener-G Egg Replacer instead of eggs, and I just mixed them in with the rest of the stuff. The batter was a little too doughy so I added a bit more almond milk and then some water.  Because I added those extra liquids at the end, the final texture was a bit off from being over-mixed. Next time I’ll just use less flour.
They were pretty tasty, and I think with just a bit more tweaking they’ll be pretty darned good.

Here’s the recipe as written:

• 250 g flour
• 330 ml beer
• 125 g butter
• 60 ml milk
• 2 eggs separated
• 1 Tbs honey
• 1 tsp vanilla

Mix everything except the egg whites in a bowl. Whisk the egg whites separately until they form soft peaks, fold into the batter.

My version, with non-metric conversions:

• 2 1/4 c flour
• 1 1/3 c beer
• 1/2 c margarine
• 60 ml vanilla almond milk
• 2 eggs worth of Ener-G Egg Replacer
• 1 Tbs granulated sugar

Mix everything together in one big bowl.

Quebec to Maryland

It’s been a busy week:

The Killah Bees went to Montréal. We lost 84-18, alas. But the Riveters beat the Montréal all star team by 100 points, so the night ended well at least. There were fun shenanigans at the after party, and then at the after-after party. None of which shall be divulged here, to protect the not-so-innocent. The drive back to MA was long and arduous, especially considering I had only gotten 5 hours of sleep (total) all weekend. When I got home, I had a couple of hours to pack and get ready for the long trip down to Maryland. We left at 10pm, and JeT drove most of the way. We arrived in Baltimore around 6 am.

JeT and I sat on my friend’s house and cats for a week. Cats were cool, house was awesome. We spent most of our days lazing around the house, and the evenings at local bars. It was too hot and humid to think, so we rarely ventured outside in daylight hours. We did walk The Avenue in Hampden one day, but that was pretty much it. My love of Baltimore has more to do with the people who live there, rather than the place itself. And I have to say, I’ve had more Natty Boh this past week than I have my ENTIRE life. Even when at Max’s Taphouse I started with the good beer, but when my other friends joined us, they kept buying me Boh. It’s cheap and/or free, so I wasn’t complaining.

I’m spending the last week here down in The County visiting my folks. Mum’s still in Canada, but Dad’s here, and I’ll get to see one of my nieces, and hopefully my brothers and nephews. I suck at playing Cruise Director, but I’m trying to plan meet-ups with various friends in the area. I won’t be able to fit everyone in, unfortunately. Even though I have a week here, I just can’t do it all, and I’m trying to not stress out about any potential hurt feelings. Everyone just needs to be on vacation at the same time as me so we can all meet up. Is that too much to ask?

I didn’t take many photos in Baltimore, because my batteries ran out and I forgot my charger, and I kept forgetting to buy new batteries. (And because I’m lame and kept forgetting my camera when going out.) I’ll try to remedy that soon. I’ve gotten a few good ones, though. And since all I’ve been doing is hanging out, a few choice photos are good enough.

I uploaded the photos from my camera (the ones from my phone are forthcoming, as usual) of the trip thus far. (Oh, and there are some photos from Sarah’s BAP in July, too.) Summer 2009