Protein Waffles with Smoothie Topping

Waffles are great for breakfast, but traditional recipes can leave you a little “carb bloated” and that’s not a good thing. (Bloating can sometimes occur when you’ve ingested too much fiber or gluten rich foods.) What is good is using alternative ingredients to enrich your waffles and make them more nutritionally rich. And what’s even better is skipping maple syrup and opting for a protein rich smoothie topping instead. Make a great breakfast choice with Protein Waffles with Smoothie Topping! Let’s jump into these Protein Waffles, shall we?

We’ve tried a lot of waffle recipes over the years and this is by far our favorite! The base recipe came from Fifteen Spatulas and we made it as specified in the original recipe first and it’s fabulous! Joanne from Fifteen Spatulas has done a fabulous job figuring out which ingredients are needed to make a great crisp, golden waffle! 

For this recipe, we added some plant based protein powder and swapped out all-purpose white flour for oat flour. There are so many types of flour on the market these days, so use what you like. We had oat flour on hand and we know that it performs well in baked goods, so it was an easy choice. 

Whipping Egg Whites

The hardest part of this recipe is whipping the egg whites. And really, it’s more time consuming than it is hard, unless of course you’re trying to whip them manually with a simple metal whisk. If you use a electric hand mixer, you can whip the egg whites in about 4 minutes. The electric hand mixer that we have comes with several attachments, the regular beaters, egg whisk, and dough beaters. We find the regular beaters to be the most effective. The single egg whisk doesn’t perform well for beating egg whites into stiff peaks. 

Using Buttermilk or Alternatives

In the original recipe, Joanne strongly recommends using a whole buttermilk and we don’t disagree with that recommendation at all. However, unless we plan ahead, we never have buttermilk on hand. We do typically have fresh lemons on hand, so we opt for the buttermilk alternative of lemon juice curdled milk (mmm, doesn’t that sound tasty?!). To measure one cup of alternative buttermilk, squeeze the juice of half a lemon into a measuring cup and fill the rest of the way with low or whole fat milk to measure a full cup. Make sure not to use a full cup of milk…the lemon juice that you squeeze into the measuring cup will replace some of the milk. If you need two cups of buttermilk alternative (as required for this recipe), squeeze the juice of one whole lemon into the measuring cup and fill the rest of the way with milk to measure out 2 cups. 

Using Protein Powder

When you add protein powder to a recipe, you’ll want to replace some of the flour with protein powder. Otherwise, the ratios of wet to dry will be out of balance and your mixture will be too dry. For this recipe, we used Garden of Life Raw Organic Protein Powder, unflavored. We used 1 oz (28 grams) of protein powder, so we removed 28 grams of oat flour from the 212.62 grams required for this recipe. Doing some quick math…that left us with 184.62 grams of oat flour plus 28 grams of protein powder to bring us back to the total of 212.62 grams of dry ingredients/flour.

Using Stevia instead of Sugar

Stevia is a plant based, zero calorie sweetener that your body doesn’t recognize as sugar. That’s a good thing for people whose bodies don’t tolerate sugar well. It’s easy to use, simply measure out the same quantity as you do regular sugar. The original recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of sugar, so we used 3 tablespoons of Stevia instead.

Smoothie Topping

In order to keep with our protein rich, low sugar waffles, we topped these waffles with a great strawberry, Greek yogurt topping. Get the recipe here. It’s quick, easy and so much better for you than maple syrup!

Print

Protein Waffles

Crisp and delicious gluten free protein waffles.

Prep Time 20 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 40 minutes

Servings 5

Author Vegetariant

Ingredients

• 2 cups whole buttermilk or juice from one lemon + milk to measure 2 cups total
• 6.5 oz oat flour (184.62 grams)
• 1 oz protein powder (28 grams)
• 2.5 oz cornstarch (70.87 grams)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs separated
• 3 Tbs Stevia
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1 Tbs vanilla or almond extract

Instructions

1. If using buttermilk alternative, squeeze juice from the lemon into a 2 cup liquid measuring cup, then fill the rest of the way with milk to measure 2 cups. Stir together and let sit while you prep the waffle batter.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, combine the oat flour, protein powder, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
3. Separate the eggs, put the egg whites in a medium mixing bowl and the egg yolks in a large mixing bowl. Set aside.
4. Start with the egg whites, add Stevia, and whip for approximately 4 minutes until the egg whites will stand in stiff peaks when you turn off the beaters and pull up. Set aside.
5. In the large mixing bowl with the egg yolks, mix in buttermilk (or buttermilk alternative), canola oil, and vanilla extract (or almond extract) together.
6. Gently stir the flour mixture into the buttermilk mixture until the batter is smooth with some small lumps).
7. Carefully fold in the egg whites until combined.
8. Pour the batter into a preheated waffle maker and cook for about 3-4 minutes. (We used nearly 1 cup of batter for each waffle. See notes.)

Recipe Notes

We used a Presto Flipside Belgian Waffle Maker for this recipe. The manufacturer suggests using 3/4 cup - 1 cup of batter for waffles. We used nearly 1 cup of batter for each.

Adapted from Fifteen Spatulas Crisp, Flavorful Waffles

Did you make Protein Waffles with Smoothie Topping? Snap a pic of your creation and share on social with #vegetariant.
Enjoy!