The only problem turned out to be finding a recipe! Most of the recipes I came across only had a small amount of flax seed in them and consisted of primarily white or wheat flour, not exactly low carb! It took about a half hour of Google searches before I finally came across one that used a combination of flax seed and soy flour. Finally something I could work with! The recipe, found here, is called "flax seed soy Belgian waffles". I only have a regular old fashioned waffle maker, but I think they turned out just fine. And when I say "old", I'm not using that term lightly. This thing was given to me by my mother who bought it in 1971! Despite being so old, it was still new when she gave it to me. She hadn't used it once in 40 years! I've used it a handful of times, but I think now that I've discovered low carb waffles this thing will be getting more of a workout.
The recipe for the waffles was quite easy. Just be sure to make the batter before you preheat your waffle maker. This gives the batter enough time to thicken up, although this particular batter is pretty thick to begin with. I'm not going to post the original recipe here because it's not my recipe, but I did make one big change. The original called for one cup of buttermilk or suggested making a sour milk out of vinegar and low fat milk. Trying to stay carb conscience I substituted the milk for heavy whipping cream and used a teaspoon of lime juice to create a sour milk, letting the mixture curdle before using it in the recipe. This creates a reaction with the baking soda called for in the recipe helping to create that light fluffy interior of the waffles. I only used lime juice because that's all I had on hand this morning. Lemon juice or vinegar would work, but don't think I'd use vinegar because I wouldn't want that flavor to come out in the waffles.
The original author of the recipe mentioned that the waffles had to cook longer after the timer went off (of light went out) on the waffle maker in order to get crisp enough. I didn't have that problem, mine were done when the light went out. These waffles came out crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, just like they're meant to be. They actually had a surprisingly light mouth-feel and were a bit crumbly. Most of the waffles I have made in the past didn't crisp up enough in this waffle maker, and I ended up putting them in the toaster to get them crisp. I didn't have to do that with these though!
With two pieces per person I had five servings of waffles. Each serving comes out to 5.6 net carbs. I count the heavy whipping cream as 1 net carb a tablespoon even though the package says it has 0. I'm a little skeptical of some hidden carbs the particular kind I buy has because the calories and the fat content just don't add up right. If you find one that's truly 0 carbs, then these would be only 2 net carbs a serving! For those of you following Atkins, this really should be an OWL and beyond recipe only because of the flax seed and soy flour, however some would argue that it's safe for extended induction (without the blueberries of course). The waffles pictured here are topped with a quarter cup of blueberries and a sugar free maple syrup making the grand total for this breakfast 10 net carbs. That's about 9 more than I'd normally have for breakfast, but they were so worth it. And since I'm just a few pounds shy of moving to the pre-maintenance phase of Atkins I can afford these carbs (especially when they're this delicious).
I'm anxious to play around with this recipe and try some different flavors like cinnamon, chocolate, and even strawberry. I will probably also try this with whole milk instead of heavy cream next time as well. The batter was very, very thick with the heavy cream and counting 1 carb per tablespoon actually came out to more carbs than there are in a cup of whole milk.
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