I’m usually the first person awake in my house. I’m also the chef. It’s therefore my job to make sure my wife and daughter are greeted with a delicious breakfast every morning. On the weekends, that usually means traditional homemade waffles. This weekend? I made waffles that were shaped like little cars and trucks. It was a hit! Here’s everything you need to know, plus my recipe for making waffle batter.
When it comes to making waffles I generally go with the classic silver Cuisinart waffle maker. It’s round and nonstick and I’ve moved it about a dozen times and it still works (though pieces are falling off of it). It’s like $30 and makes perfectly-sized grids of deliciousness.
A couple of weeks ago I was on the phone with Bill Caswell and trying to explain the noise in the background was the sizzling of waffles. Bill goes 900% with everything he does and, no surprise at all, a big box from Amazon showed up at my place a few days later. Inside was this:
This is the Waffle Wow Cars & Trucks Waffle Maker. It’s like the Cuisinart, but it makes cars and trucks (and who says truth in advertising doesn’t still exist)?
Here’s what it’s like all opened up:
It’s a typical Amazon product in that it’s basically just plastic on the outside. I followed the simple instructions and cleaned off the tray. Then I whipped up some waffle batter and got to work (recipe below).
Because it has deep little recessions in the mold I think the best way to fill it up is using a small spoon, but you can also use a small funnel if you have one. As you can see here, I underfilled one of the trays and overfilled the other.
Considering these are waffles, I was pretty pleased with the level of detail you can get from the mold. It’s not perfect and they’re not little matchbox cars, but it’s generally clear what kind of vehicle you’re going to get. Here they are on the plate:
I made a few rounds of these and got better each time I did it, so the truck got better:
For the second round, I let the waffles stay in the mold a little longer and got a better shape. They’re fun and tasty! Here’s me trying to make a syrup road kept in by papaya and sausage. It sort of worked.
I reheated the first batch and, wouldn’t you believe it, there was snow on the ground:
Of course, my daughter refused to eat them until it snowed on top of the waffles as well.
You can buy the waffle maker here and, if you do and use that link, we might get a commission. This is a hilarious way to make money, but it would be silly not to include a referral link. (Editor’s note: The waffle space has been ripe for e-mobility-focused disruption for years now. -PG)
Here’s my recipe, if you’re curious:
Matt’s Waffle Recipe
Ingredients
DRY
2 Cups of all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice mix
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
smidgen of salt
WET
1/4 cup of melted butter
2 eggs, beaten
1 3/4 cups of milk (I use unsweetened almond milk)
1 glug of vanilla extract
WHAT TO DO
Take all the dry stuff and put it in a bowl and mix it. In another bowl, beat the eggs, mix in the milk, slowly mix in the melted and slightly cooled butter (so it doesn’t cook the eggs). Take the wet stuff and slowly beat it into the dry stuff until you have a slightly runny batter. Don’t overmix. Wait a few minutes.
Before you heat up the waffle maker, wipe it down, dry it, and then spray it with cooking spray.
Once the waffle maker is warm, use a spoon or small measuring cup to add the batter. Cook the waffles. Eat them. Serve in fun ways.
Note: I don’t do a yeasty, Belgian-style waffle because my daughter seems to like a little chewier of a pancake or waffle. My guess is a firmer batter would probably yield a harder, slightly more detailed shell. If you want it to be more Belgian you can add a tablespoon of sugar, remove half a cup of liquid. If you want to make actual Belgian waffles you can follow this recipe from King Arthur Baking.
Enjoy!
I have this waffle maker! I got it as a novelty to make some desserts for work (car dealership). Once I got the batter consistency dialed in, it worked decently. However all the nooks and crannies in the vehicle design are not fun to clean (yes, even with proper lubrication prior to waffling), especially as those spots tend to be the ones that turn from cooked to burned (burnt?) soonest.
Fun though.
Not to blow smoke up your exhaust pipe Jason, but sometimes it’s a wonder to me that you’re not (yet) a mainstream media darling, or at least a niche sex symbol (i.e.: the male equivalent of that old chestnut, the ‘thinking man’s crumpet’). If your parental accomplishments ever get noticed by Reuters or the AP, we’re going to wind up losing you to Entertainment Tonight, People, and Oprah.
Is that papaya I spy on your plate? I do enjoy some good papaya.
‘Cars and Coffee’
Missed opportunity for a headline.
What a coincidence, car waffles are the favorite breakfast of my 2 and 4 year olds. We have this exact waffle iron that we received as a gift, and another one — which we bought when the younger one started eating them in bulk — that does construction vehicles.
We do banana waffles: 2 bananas, 2 eggs, 1 cup oats, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon vanilla all blended in a standard blender. They hold the shapes well, but are still soft rather than crunchy (kids are picky about textures).
They love helping to make them too, and cutting bananas and measuring out oats are really easy for the young chefs.
Put your waffle batter in a plastic squeeze bottle, like a picnic ketchup bottle. Or if you don’t use real maple syrup, one of those plastic bottles that the syrup comes in. Perfect dispensing of the batter every time.
To save prep time in the morning, you can fill the bottle with the dry ingredients ahead of time, then add the liquids and shake. That way you’ll have much more time for building waffle car roads, landscapes and garages.
You could even buy a pancake batter bottle, if you want.
Thank me later when you’re enjoying your new luxury premium waffle cars and trucks.
Add in a little food coloring and this could become a Christmas breakfast tradition.
What type of animal doesn’t use real maple syrup?!?
Or own a piping bag?
Any bag can be a piping bag with a hole cut in it. I use zipper-seal ones myself and snip a lower corner off.
Nice! I wonder if it works better if you flip it halfway though like with a Belgian waffle maker? And could it make Æbleskivers?
Flipping it I think actually activates the safety switch, but as thin as the batter needs to be it would go all over. The way it works is you get both plates hot by keeping them together, add the batter to the bottom plate (which holds the top section of the car shapes) – but not too much – and the hot top plate cooks the bottom sections of the car shapes (floorplan and tires).
That said, as inconsistent as I’ve had some results, I have been tempted to cut up the plates and make a new form to fit in my Belgian waffle maker, which does flip and generally does a lovely job (presuming it does its job and the user doesn’t flip it too early and spill batter out the sides).
I need to stop receiving novelty gifts. Especially “unitasker” appliances.
I think this is the first time I’ve seen a recipe on a car blog 😀
Have you not heard of David’s shower spaghetti? Or cooking a meal under the hood while driving?
I’ve been drivin’ all night, my stomachs hungry behind the wheel
There’s a rumble in my tummy that drives my heel
It’s my breakfast callin’, sayin’, “I need you here”
And it’s a half past four and I’m shiftin’ gear
When she is hungry and the longing gets too much
She sends a cable, coming in from above
Don’t need no phone at all
We’ve got a thing that’s called waffle love
We’ve got an aroma in the air
Waffle love
It needs Bond’s Lotus so it can navigate the ocean of butter I will drown them in.
waffles & pancakes are simply vehicles for butter, imo (pun not intended-but Ima leave it)
This is where the butter meets the mould.
Take your damn star.
Yoink
I noticed that the same company makes one for trains, which includes the tracks. You can have breakfast and legitimately play with your food!
Not enough holes to fill with berries and syrup
You put them in the truck bed, then make the vehicles have a spectacular collision.
Your breakfast is missing something.
Traffic jam?
That’s fun.
However the first and only thing I can think about is that most of the pictures are wrong. From the waffle-iron lid, it’s instantly obvious that the cars are made upside down, but all of the sales pictures and the boxes have the cars right side up! They’ve been cooked, taken out, and then carefully placed back to make it look like they cooked that way.
This bothers me. For no good reason. But it does.
Matt, thank you for showing them correctly in your own picture of the waffle-iron.
You’re not wrong. I have one, and it does an OK job (batter consistency and cooking time is critical), but I expected it to work like a Belgian waffle maker where you flip it part way through cooking to fill in all the spaces.
I have a cake pan that has car molds in it. Made them for a son’s birthday ONCE. LOL
Up the bacon on ramp, through the tunnel onto the cholesterol expressway to my heart.
I’m sorry but those sausages look suspect
Haha, I thought they were some kind of date
It’s a round veggie sausage cut in half, it does look weird!
Don’t google long skinny dates LOL
I thought the veggie sausages looked like Piarom Dates
That whole plate looked deeply disturbing to me, at first glance your waffle cars appeared to be driving through roads of raw salmon and dried poo.
Yeah, these guys really need to re-name “The Morning Dump”
Quickly…