Kid Friendly Healthy Whole Wheat Waffles with Fruit

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Breakfast for dinner is pretty popular in our house. I think this is for a few reasons: First, we love breakfast! Second, we usually have all the ingredients on hand for either waffles or pancakes. Finally, it’s easy to make and relatively quick which — as many of you know I’m sure — scores big points in a busy 3 kid house.

Since we try to make healthy decisions for our household we usually make whole wheat waffles. Going with whole wheat flour is a small thing, but if you make a lot of small changes in your life in the name of your health then you can start to see a big difference. It’s also not always realistic to drastically change your eating habits all at once, so if you are looking to eat healthier then often incremental change is the way to go.

For those who want to read more about the health benefits of whole grains.

Granted, we often make bacon to go with our whole wheat waffles so I’m not going to pretend that when we do breakfast for dinner it’s all about eating healthy. But, we do tend to serve our waffles with tons of fresh fruit: bananas, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries…pretty much whatever we have on hand. It’s about striking a balance. If they eat whole grain waffles topped with lots of valuable fruit then we don’t mind if they top it off with a slice of bacon or two. I know there are plenty of folks out there who follow vegan or vegetarian diets who don’t eat bacon and that’s great, but it’s one of the food items I could NOT give up. It’s too good! Everything in moderation is our motto.

Everyone in our house loves fresh strawberries!

We currently have 2 waffle makers: A mini circle waffle maker and a Heart Shaped Waffle Maker. I also noticed you can now get an Animal Shaped Waffle Maker. Our kids would love that.The idea is to keep it fun. The kids love stacking their waffles with banana and strawberry slices and making little sandwiches. If that’s what it takes for them to eat a good meal, then stack away!

Our Whole Wheat Waffle Recipe is adapted from the waffle recipe we found in Moosewood Restaurant New Classics,

We LOVE everything Moosewood related. Every time we visit family in New York, we try to stop by the Moosewood restaurant in Ithaca for a meal.

The recipe is pretty easy. All the standard ingredients, plus the addition of corn meal and flax seed. Flaxseed is one of those foods that really is supposed to have a lot of health benefits. If you’re unfamiliar with it, you should be able to find it at your local supermarket. If we can find it in our small town, then it has to be available everywhere else!

In the name of keeping it fun, we added a little chocolate drizzle to our waffles this go round. Enticing your kids with the occasional bonus treat is a legitimate parent tactic! Whatever it takes to get our munchkins to grow as eaters. It’s hard when you have picky eaters. We haven’t figured it all out yet, but we hope by keeping meal time fun and getting them to continue to try new things we’ll continue to grow the number of meals that work for the whole family. It is nice when you don’t have to fix separate meals for the kids and the grown-ups and breakfast for dinner is a something that works for everyone in our house.

On to the recipe:

Kid Friendly Healthy Whole Wheat Waffles with Fruit

Print Rate

Prep Time: 15 minutes minutes

Ingredients

• 1 c . whole wheat flower
• 3/4 c . white flower
• 2 Tbsp . sugar
• 1 Tbsp . baking powder
• 1/2 tsp . baking sodaz
• 1 tsp . salt
• 1/4 c . ground flax seed
• 1/4 c . cornmeal
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 c . milk
• 1 Tbsp . vegetable oil

Instructions

• Mix all dry ingredients together (whole wheat flour through cornmeal).
• In a separate mixing bowl or liquid measuring cup whisk eggs, milk, and oil together.
• Pour liquid ingredients into dry ingredients and stir just until combined.
• Let sit for 10 minutes.
• Preheat waffle iron and use as you would for any other waffles.

Notes

*Recipe adapted from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics

*I think we usually end up using 1/3 c. of batter for our heart shaped waffle iron and 1/2-1 Tablespoon of batter per mini waffle.

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