Still Feeling Peckish

So I admit it. I’ve jumped onto the chaffle bandwagon. Love it or hate it, the new keto craze for chaffles (cheese and egg waffles) is here to stay. I didn’t quite understand the chaffle craze since the family is pretty happy with my cheddar cheese and chives waffle recipe. But I guess that there is an attraction for the absolute simplicity of cheese and egg in a waffle maker. There must be a lot of people trying the keto diet who have no idea what to have for breakfast!

Today I did have time for breakfast and I decided I would try my hand at making chaffles. Of course, me being me, could not resist tweaking chaffles to have a Japanese twist. So I made okonomiyaki-inspired chaffles. Okonomiyaki is a really popular Japanese street food. It is a savory pancake with a random bunch of ingredients eg shrimp, squid, pork belly in a batter. “Okonomi” actually means “what you like” and “yaki” means “fried”. I’ve actually made low carb type versions of the okonomiyaki pancake, but always had difficulty flipping the very loaded pancake. So it made a lot of sense throwing all the ingredients into a waffle maker – it means nothing falls out of the cooked batter and it is supremely easy and quick to make.

Cooking for me is literally cooking from what I had in the fridge, so the chaffle included chopped cabbage, chives and ham. If I had a little forward thinking I would have thawed out some frozen shrimp and squid to add to this mix. Nonetheless, this chaffle recipe did remind me of the okonomiyaki that I’ve had in the past. I love that I got to eat one of my previous favourite street foods. Certainly the chaffle was slightly less crispy than the typical okonomiyaki pancake, but I think that’s something common to most low carb pancake and waffle recipes. Kid#2 didn’t object to the texture and gave me 2 thumbs up for this breakfast treat!