Gingerbread Pumpkin Waffles from Savory Sweet Life Cookbook by Alice Currah

I've become pumpkin obsessed again. While cleaning my pantry I found a large can of pumpkin that I hoarded from last fall. Canned pumpkin can be challenging to find in stores when it's not fall. When I planned my menu last week (which was a total fail and belongs in another post), the pumpkin waffles recipe jumped out at me.

We bought our first Belgian waffle maker earlier this year. I love that thing. It makes amazing waffles. I usually make a double or triple batch and freeze the rest for a quick breakfast. I couldn't resist a recipe titled "Gingerbread Pumpkin Waffles" from Alice Currah's Savory Sweet Life: 100 Simply Delicious Recipes for Every Family Occasion.

The recipe was very simple: just three steps. I only needed one bowl. Yay for recipes that don't require me to mix the wet and dry ingredients separately before putting them all together. Obviously Alice Currah is a mother and doesn't like doing a lot of dishes. (I have no idea if she likes doing dishes or not, but she is a mother.) I didn't follow her recipe exactly because I only keep whole wheat flour in our home and we were out of granulated sugar, but I made it work. I also added some plain lowfat Greek yogurt since whole wheat flour needs a little bit more moisture than all-purpose.

I had high hopes for these waffles. They smelled amazing. The mix of cinnamon, ginger, and cloves whisked me right into fall. They burned in my waffle maker. Currah makes a note that since these waffles are denser than other waffles, they'll take longer to cook. Longer than the red light/green light indicator says.

Blurry because I couldn't wait to eat the rest of it!

They did take a lot longer to cook. I made these tableside for dinner and everyone ate the waffles faster than I could make them.  It was a fine line between making sure they were cooked all the way through and burning them. I burned a lot of waffles. And they stuck. I sprayed my waffle maker before I put in the batter. No luck. They came off easily, but I had pry them off with a chopstick.

The ones that survived my chopstick torture tasted great. The kids gobbled them up. Hubby, who's not a big pumpkin fan, had thirds. I thought they were amazing topped with just whipped cream. Unfortunately, I won't be making them again anytime soon.

I'm not sure if I changed too many things in the recipe or I should have sprayed more cooking spray on my wafflemaker. I was totally bummed that it didn't work out.

Alice Currah's Savory Sweet Life: 100 Simply Delicious Recipes for Every Family Occasion is a gorgeous book. Each chapter tells a story and offers recipes for that particular occasion. Sunday Mornings offered foods like breakfast pizza, quiche, and French toast casserole. There's recipes for Father's Day, Snow Days,  Afternoon Tea Party and more. Every recipe has a gorgeous photo with it.

I haven't had a chance to try out any of the other recipes from the book but many of them appeal to me. While I appreciate that Currah tells a story to tie the recipes together, it's hard for me to feel inspired when I flip through for weeknight dinners. I guess I'm old fashioned. I would have liked all the entree type meals to be grouped together to make it easy to menu plan. I know there's an index I can use, but the photos and ingredient lists really get my brain working.

I like that Currah includes a lot of Asian inspired meals which appeals to me a lot. Duh, right? Since she's Asian and I'm Asian too. LOL. There's a wide variety of recipes which I like. I think I will definitely try more recipes from  Savory Sweet Life.

I received a review copy of the book. Links to book title are affiliate links.