Cinnamon Waffles

The week after the year mark and I am still here. This is the thing about hard dates: you prepare for them so completely, you anticipate them so thoroughly, that when they pass you are almost surprised to find yourself on the other side. I spent February bracing for March third and then March third came and was enormous and terrible and full of family and food and love and then it passed, the way everything passes, into the next day, which was March fourth, which was just a Monday.

I took Monday off from cooking. Not completely—I made Calvin's breakfast, I couldn't not—but I didn't cook for anyone else. I sat at the kitchen table in the morning with my coffee and I wrote. Not the blog yet—I'm still turning that over, still deciding if I have the words or if the words have me—but in a notebook. Just writing. Thinking about what this year has made of me, what Marcus made of me by leaving, what Bernice made of me by staying all these years and teaching me the one thing that has held me through everything. The one thing. The kitchen.

Bernice's Table opens in April. We have volunteers—eight women who came to the planning meeting, who signed up for shifts, who asked questions about the menu and the logistics and the sourcing with the seriousness of women who understand that feeding people is serious work. We have the church's blessing and the fellowship hall's kitchen and a budget that is modest but real. We have a name. We have a purpose. We have every Tuesday evening in April and all the Tuesdays after that until the work is done, which will be never, because the hunger doesn't stop.

I made cinnamon rolls this week. Not for church, not for the Tuesday dinner—just for us, just for Calvin and me on a Saturday morning when the spring light was doing something particular through the kitchen window. Cinnamon rolls are not my specialty. I make them rarely because they require a patience with yeast dough that I don't always have. But this Saturday I had the patience. I let the dough rise twice. I made the filling dark with brown sugar and cinnamon. I baked them until the tops were just golden and the house smelled like something that had no grief in it at all, only sweetness, only morning, only the particular pleasure of something warm from the oven on a cool spring day.

I didn’t make cinnamon rolls on that Saturday — I started to, and then I looked at the clock and looked at Calvin still in his pajamas and decided that the patience I had was real but it was also finite, and what we needed was the cinnamon and the warmth and the sweetness without the two hours of rising. These waffles gave us everything the morning was asking for: the smell of brown sugar and cinnamon moving through the house, the pleasure of something golden and warm, and a table where it was just the two of us and the spring light and nowhere we had to be.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs, separated
1 3/4 cups whole milk
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Nonstick cooking spray or additional butter for the waffle iron
Maple syrup and powdered sugar, for serving

Instructions

Preheat the waffle iron. Heat your waffle iron according to the manufacturer’s instructions and lightly coat with nonstick spray or butter.
Whisk the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt until evenly combined.
Separate and beat the eggs. Separate the eggs, placing the yolks in a medium bowl and the whites in a clean, dry bowl. Beat the egg whites with a hand mixer or whisk until stiff peaks form; set aside.
Mix the wet ingredients. Add the milk, melted butter, and vanilla extract to the bowl with the egg yolks and whisk until smooth.
Combine wet and dry. Pour the egg yolk mixture into the flour mixture and stir until just combined — a few small lumps are fine. Do not overmix.
Fold in the egg whites. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold the beaten egg whites into the batter in two additions, keeping as much air as possible for a lighter waffle.
Cook the waffles. Pour enough batter to fill your waffle iron (about 3/4 cup per waffle, depending on the size). Close the lid and cook until the waffles are golden and the steam has mostly stopped, 4 to 5 minutes. Repeat with remaining batter.
Serve warm. Dust with powdered sugar and serve immediately with warm maple syrup.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cinnamon Waffles — The Morning After the Hard Date