Whole Wheat Zucchini Waffles

With the kiddo’s new dietary needs, we’ve been working on trying to fit as many vegetables into our meals as possible. The one pain-in-the-butt is breakfast. Fruit is good, but it still needs to be limited for him, so I ask you: how in the world do you get a good majority of vegetables into breakfast???

Well, this recipe is a start. It’s still not a majority of vegetable (versus the other ingredients), but it’s dang good, and really healthy, too. This recipe is just a variation of the hundred’s of others like it out there on the web. I just adjusted it a bit (of course) to suit my preferences. I may try adding a little more zucchini next time, just to see if I can, and maybe some applesauce instead of some oil, but really, it’s very good for you as is.

Whole Wheat Zucchini Waffles

2 cups whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ginger

pinch of nutmeg

1 tbsp brown sugar

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

2 small or 1 large zucchini

1 egg

1 ½ cups skim milk, divided

1 tbsp vanilla

2 tbsp oil

Wash and dry the zucchini, and chop into large coins, leaving the skins on. It really creates a nice effect, the little flecks of green that end up in the batter. Trust me.

Combine zucchini, ½ cup of milk, and the rest of the wet ingredients in a blender, and blend until smooth. You should have about 2 cups of liquid at this point.

I ended up adding at least ½ cup more milk, or more, to the batter to get the consistency I wanted for waffles. This amount of liquid wouldn’t have cut it. I would add the zucchini mixture to the dry ingredients first, and then add as much milk as you think is necessary to get a good waffle-batter consistency. Next time, I’m just going to add most of the milk straight to the blender, since I know how it turned out for me. Do what you think will work best.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and combine. The batter may look a little weird until you get all the milk added in, but trust me, the finished product looks great.

Using whatever measurement works best for your waffle iron, bake the waffles. Mine takes ½ cup at a time for two waffles, so we got a good 12 waffles out of this batch. Serve with butter, syrup, or fruit. Personally, we like to heat up frozen strawberries or raspberries in the microwave with a tsp or so of sugar, and then mash them up to serve over waffles. So yummy, and much better for you than syrup.

These are awesome! They taste almost like zucchini bread, but not so rich that you don’t want it for breakfast. And with the whole wheat and the zucchini, they are nice and dense, but still light enough for a good waffle. Pleeeeease try these, especially before your gardens run out of zucchini (which, from what I hear, is next to impossible…..?) =)