‘Popeye’ Spinach Waffles

My kids are pretty good when it comes to eating vegetables. Most vegetables they like outright, some though they only like in certain ways e.g. only raw or only as soup (I think it’s a texture thing). Spinach is one of the vegetables that falls in to the latter category. My spinach and Parmesan dumplings I shared a while ago were a success, so I was trying to think of other ways to get them to agree to more spinach, and I landed on waffles. Waffles are great, because you can make them both sweet or savoury, and you can pack all kinds of ingredients in to them, including spinach. And after introducing them to some cartoons about spinach loving Popeye, these waffles were just flying off the plate they were so eager to eat them.

My kids have named them ‘Popeye Waffles’! Here’s how to make them…

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 50g gluten free plain flour
• 50g ground almonds
• 50g spinach
• 50g grated Parmesan
• 200g Ricotta
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• vegetable oil (for the waffle iron)

Directions:

• Blend together the eggs, spinach, Ricotta and grated Parmesan until smooth (I use a tall bowl and a blender stick, you could also use a blender instead if you have one).
• In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, almonds, baking powder and salt.
• Fold the dry ingredients in to the wet ingredients until fully mixed.
• Heat your waffle iron according to the instructions, brush the hot iron with some vegetable oil, then add a ladle of batter per waffle. You will know best how much batter to use in your iron. The batter should make 6 waffles in a standard sized iron.
• I baked these on the highest temperature setting, then left them in a little bit longer after the light came on to say they were ready, checking every 30 seconds or so to make sure they weren’t burning. I’ve found that with the other gluten free recipes I’ve tried too, i.e. that they don’t go dark enough or fall apart too easily, if I don’t bake them for that little bit longer.

These waffles taste great with all kinds of toppings. We put out lots of different things so that everyone could ‘design’ their waffles to meet their preferences and tastes.

We included things like berries, apple sauce, Greek yoghurt, cherry tomatoes, hummus, smashed avocado, cheese, and mixed seeds. Here’s my eldest adding some berries and apple sauce to his waffles…

And here’s my plate with avocado and goat’s cheese on one half of my waffles, and hummus with mixed seeds on the other half…

Another time we made these, we had them with sliced Emmental cheese with a fried egg on top, which also tasted really good…

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