Rainy day waffle party

A couple weeks ago, someone broke the carafe for our office coffee maker and all hell broke loose. Since we have a lot of serious coffee drinkers in the office and it was a Monday morning no less, the crisis had to be resolved quickly. A new coffee maker was purchased at everyone's favorite downtown shopping hotspot and the daily grind returned to normal. Or so we thought.

After about two weeks we came to the conclusion that the new coffee maker wasn't quite up to snuff compared to our last model, and was brewing some pretty sub-standard coffee. Considering the fact that we have awesome beans on hand from Peace Coffee, it seemed almost sacrilegious to commit such an act. On top of it all, we have some folks in the office who insist on making coffee without reading the posted guidelines for the number of scoops to use. Yes, we do actually have posted guidelines (believe it or not). Desperate times call for desperate measures, so we scrounged amongst ourselves and were able to assemble a killer pressed coffee station right in our department.

So, what does this have to do with waffles? Well, we decided that our great accomplishment required a little celebration to get everyone acquainted with our new little corner of awesomeness in the department, and what could be better than a bunch of delicious waffles. So I crammed our waffle maker and a batch and a half of waffle batter into my Ortlieb Velocity messenger bag and headed to the office.

Waffles work great because they can be easily divided among several people. And even though waffles take a little while to cook, the timing of fresh waffles to arriving staff members turned out about as ideal as possible. We topped them with some tasty homemade blueberry syrup that was brought in, drinking our coffee and conversing jovially. To say that it helped brighten the gloomy gray day outside is an understatement.

Later in the day one of my coworkers said to me, "We should do this every Friday." I couldn't agree more, but maybe someone else wants to get up extra early and make the batter? Here's the recipe, adapted from Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.

Rainy day waffles

Makes 4 six-inch waffles

• 2 cups almond milk
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 3 tbsp canola oil
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
• ¼ cup cornmeal
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp cornstarch

Heat up your waffle iron while you get all your ingredients together.

Combine the wet ingredients with the sugar and mix thoroughly.

Add the dry ingredients and mix until the batter is smooth. You can prepare the batter up to this point a few hours ahead of time if time requires.

Cook according to your waffle iron manufacturer's directions and enjoy.

Beverage pairing: Peace Coffee Pollinator blend