French Waffles

French waffles! Have you ever had a French Waffle (sometimes called a Danish Waffle or Parisian Waffle)? Oh my gosh…if not, you have to try these. They are flakey, buttercreamy, raspberry goodness!

When we were young, we had a family tradition that was by far our favorite. We would spend Easter in Solvang, If you aren’t familiar with Central California, you must seek out this amazing little town at least once…especially if you like pastries and cookies and buttercream!  And Denmark, of course. It’s an incredibly quaint village and the food is amazing. If you don’t have the time or bank account to travel to Denmark just yet…this is a really close second!

It probably goes without saying that we ate our way through this beautiful little town every time we visited. So many yummy treats! This particular post focuses on one of our favorites, French Waffles. But we promise you that we will have more posts with recipes for other delectable Danish treats.

If you happen to live in Northern California, there’s an amazing Danish Bakery in Burlingame, Copenhagen Bakery & Cafe. We visit this lovely bakery when we can’t make the long drive to Solvang.

We can’t always make the trip to Solvang, or to Copenhagen Bakery & Cafe, for that matter. So we created a recipe of our own. This way we can eat them whenever we want. And we want them a lot!

Our waffles are small. Most commonly they are about 8-inches long but we make ours about 3-inches long. A little easier to eat and just as yummy!

Rolling sugar into dough.

Bake until just starting to brown at edges.

Fill with buttercream and raspberry jam.

French Waffles

Pastry:

• 1 cup (8 oz) European unsalted butter (83% butterfat), cold
• 2 1/4 cups (10.3 oz) flour
• ½ tsp salt
• 3-6 TBS water
• Granulated sugar for rolling

Cut butter into small pieces and toss into flour and salt.  Either using pastry cutter or food processor, blend until it looks like coarse meal.  Add just enough cold water to allow dough to come together.  Separate into two balls and flatten each into a disk.  Refrigerate several hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 400.  Line a small baking sheet or cutting board with wax or parchment paper. Roll dough to ¼” thick between 2 pieces of parchment.  Cut dough using 1 ½” round fluted cutter. Place a couple of cut rounds of dough onto prepared cookie sheet or cutting board. Generously dust each round with sugar.  Using patterned rolling pin, apply slight pressure to flatten dough slightly and impress pattern and sugar.  Place cookies (now ovals) on parchment lined baking sheet at least 1” apart.  Bake one sheet at a time for 6-8 minutes until light golden brown, rotating pan halfway through baking time.  Allow to cool on baking sheets.

Buttercream Filling:

• 1 cup (8 oz) unsalted butter (preferably European style) at room temp
• 2 TBS heavy cream
• 1 ½ tsp vanilla
• ¼ tsp salt
• 2 3/4 cups (12 oz) confectioner’s sugar
• Seedless Raspberry Jam for filling

Beat butter, cream, vanilla and salt on medium speed 1-2 minutes.  Lower speed and slowly add sugar, beating until well incorporated 1-2 minutes.  Increase speed to medium and beat about 4-5 minutes until light and fluffy, adding more sugar or heavy cream if needed to get proper consistency for piping.

Assembly:

Pair up pastries of similar size and shape. Turn over one pastry to become the bottom.

Pipe “dam” of frosting around edge of the bottom pastry using a star or plain tip (we use a #5 open star tip). Fill center with raspberry jam.  Place second pastry on top and press together lightly to adhere.

Store in airtight container in refrigerator for up to one week. Bring to room temperature before serving.

Makes about 18