Galentine’s Day Waffle Cakes

What’s better than Valentine’s Day? Galentine’s Day! And what’s the best dessert for Galentine’s Day? Waffle cakes of course!

And if you’re wondering what the heck a waffle cake is, it’s just cake batter cooked in a waffle iron. 🙂

My recipe for waffle cake is a vanilla sponge cake base made with a little bit of yogurt and almond flour to help keep it really soft and tender. The waffle cakes are meant to be eaten cooled and frosted, not warm right off the iron like a regular waffle. So the batter needs to be extra moist and tender to keep it from drying out.

Decorating these waffle cakes is easy-peasy: all you have to do is fill in each little square with a swoosh or dollop of filling. Two different fillings is good, but three is even better!

You only need a tiny bit of frosting and filling to cover each waffle, so this is a great way to use up leftovers from other baking projects.

Making the Sponge Cake Batter

If you’ve never made a sponge cake before, it’s a little different than your standard butter cake. The batter has no baking powder or baking soda. Instead, all the lift comes from whipping air into the eggs.

The first part of the recipes involves whipping together the egg yolks, sugar, yogurt, and vanilla. In a normal sponge cake you would whip the yolks and sugar to the “ribbon” stage, but since you’re just going to clamp the batter in a waffle iron you don’t really need to worry about that. So I just whip everything together at once until it’s thick and creamy.

After the yolk mixture is nice and creamy, you need to add the dry ingredients. You can sift them directly over the yolk mixture. This allows them to fall gently into the batter, rather than in one heavy clump. You don’t need to mix the dry ingredients in though, you’ll do that later.

In the next part of the recipe you whip the egg whites (with the salt) to stiff peaks. This means that when you pull the whisk gently out of the egg whites, a small peak should stand straight up.

Finally, Fold the whites into the yolk mixture a third at a time. The idea is to gently mix everything together without deflating the batter too much.

Cooking the Waffle Cakes

The cooking stage is really important for these cake waffles, so read carefully. Although it sounds counter intuitive, you don’t want to let them develop a dark golden brown color.

Normal waffles are cooked to a deep golden brown because they are meant to be eaten still warm and crispy. But these cake waffles are meant to be decorated with buttercream, and you can’t put buttercream on a warm cake!

So instead, you only want to cook the waffles until they are just set. For me, this took about 2 minutes, but it could vary greatly depending on your waffle iron. I would check early and often until you figure out what works for your iron.

They should have a very light golden hue, but they will be delicate and floppy when you take them out of the waffle iron. This way when they cool down, they’ll be soft and moist rather than tough and chewy. I also found it really helpful to use a large spatula to help lift them out or the iron.

Decorating the Waffle Cakes

I decorated my waffle cakes with a mix of buttercreams, ganaches, jam and curd. You could really put ANYTHING on these, but I think a mix of something creamy and something tart is the perfect mix.

To give you some ideas, I made three different flavors:

Raspberry (vanilla and raspberry buttercreams, raspberry jam, white chocolate ganache)

Chocolate (vanilla and chocolate buttercreams, chocolate ganache)

Lemon (vanilla buttercream and lemon curd)

Print Recipe

Vanilla Almond Waffle Cakes

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dessert – American

By Katie – Serves: four 7 inch waffles

Prep Time: 15 minutes – Cooking Time: 10 minutes – Total Time: 25 minutes

A light and tender sponge cake designed to be cooked in your waffle iron.

Ingredients

• 6 large eggs, separated
• 200 grams granulated sugar
• 45 grams plain whole yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 65 grams cake flour
• 65 grams almond flour
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Instructions

1

Preheat your waffle iron to 350° F or a medium heat setting,

2

Separate eggs into two large bowls. Be careful not to get any yolk in the whites.

3

To the yolks, add the sugar, yogurt, and vanilla extract.

4

Whip the yolk mixture on medium high speed until thick and creamy.

5

Sift cake flour and almond flour over the yolk mixture and set aside.

6

Add salt to the bowl of egg whites. With a clean whisk, whip whites on medium high speed until they form stiff peaks.

7

Gently fold the whites into the yolk mixture in three additions.

8

Fill your waffle iron with about 8 oz or 1/4 of the batter. Cook for two minutes or until the waffle is just beginning to brown. Use a fork and a large spatula to gently lift the waffle out. Do not overcook! Repeat with the remaining batter.

9

Let the waffles cool, then decorate with whichever fillings you like.

Notes

You will likely need to experiment to figure out the best cooking temperature and time for your waffle maker. While it's tempting to cook the waffle to a nice deep golden brown, this will make them dry out by the time they cool. Instead, only leave them in the iron until just barely cooked. This will give you the best texture to go with your frosting and decorations. The waffles are best eaten the same day they are cooked.