Waffles

A waffle is a light, crisp, dimpled cake, leavened with baking powder or yeast, baked in a hinged iron that cooks both faces at once and stamps in the familiar grid. Most people meet them at breakfast under maple syrup, but they double as desserts under cream or ice cream. The family is wide: soft yeasted Brussels waffles at one end, thin caramel-filled stroopwafels at the other. Batter recipe, iron temperature, and dwell time decide whether the inside stays tender and the outside shatters, and industrial frozen waffles rely on fast freezing plus toaster reheating to bring that texture back. Those pockets are not decoration — they are engineered to hold toppings.