Pumpkin Waffles

Oh fall, I love you.  The clothes, the weather, the food.  It is all so wonderful!  I'm missing my favorite fall clothes since I seem to be outgrowing something new every week all of a sudden.  I've decided to fill my craving for fall, with fall recipes instead (maybe that's the problem with the clothes fitting).

Jake has "special breakfast" on the weekends and he usually picks some sort of waffle, pancake, or bagel.  This weekend we decided on pumpkin waffles.  I found this great recipe on all recipes and made a few tweaks.  These are not light as air waffles.  They are filled with delicious pumpkin so they are dense, but in the best possible way.  I just have a classic waffle maker and this made us 8 waffles.  Since we each ate 1, that meant that I could freeze the rest and then Jake we can have pumpkin time, anytime. Yay!

Start out by mixing up some whole wheat pastry flour, baking powder, a generous amount of pumpkin pie spice, some salt, and some brown sugar.  If I weren't making these for Jake I would use a bit more brown sugar but since he doesn't like things that are too sugary (if I hadn't given birth to him, I wouldn't be sure he was mine) 1/3 of a cup was enough.

Then in a separate bowl mix together canned pumpkin, 4 egg yolks (we'll use the whites in a minute), and some low-fat buttermilk (If you don't have any buttermilk you can make your own by adding about a teaspoon of white vinegar per cup of milk and letting it sit for about 15 minutes.)

Add the flour mixture and 1/2 a stick of melted butter to the pumpkin mixture and stir until just combined.

Remember those egg whites?  Put them in a clean dry bowl and beat with a hand mixer until soft peaks form.  This took me about 4-5 minutes.  Then fold in a little of the egg whites until they are fully combined.  Then gently fold in the rest of the egg whites.

The batter will be very thick, that's okay.  Remember there is a lot of pumpkin in these beauties.

Then cook them in a waffle iron sprayed with cooking spray and enjoy.

I had mine with butter (actually it was fake butter) and lite syrup.  These would be even better with real maple syrup but I used what I had. 

Pumpkin Waffles
Adapted from AllRecipes 

• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 4 tsp. baking powder
• 1 1/2 tbls. pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/3 - 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 2 cups low-fat buttermilk
• 4 eggs, separated
• 1/4 cup butter, melted

1. Combine the dry ingredients (flour through brown sugar) in a medium bowl.
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, buttermilk, and egg yolks.
3. Stir the flour mixture and melted butter into the pumpkin mixture until just combined.
4. In a clean, dry bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form (4-5 minutes with a hand mixer).
5. Fold 1/3 of the egg whites into the batter until fully incorporated.
6. Gently fold the remainder of the egg whites into the batter.
7. Cook on a preheated waffle iron sprayed with cooking spray.

I'm linking up with Tasty Thursdays,  Flashback Friday,  Link Party Palooza, Best of the Weekend, Show Stopper Saturday, Retro Repin, and Strut Your Stuff Saturday.