Salted Caramel Pecan Waffles

When Lori from The French Connection sent me a bottle of her Salt Caramel Syrup to try out, I knew I wanted to come up with a recipe to showcase the product rather than just give a product review.  I thought about what I could do and finally decided to give my tried and true waffle recipe a redo. My idea was to turn my ordinary waffles into salted caramel toasted pecan waffles topped with Lori's Salt Caramel Syrup and toasted pecans.

At first glance, Lori's Salt Caramel Syrup looks a lot like real maple syrup. The bottle is similar, the color is similar, but the taste is decidedly different. The ingredients listed on the bottle are caramelized cane sugar, mineral water, Tahitian vanilla, natural maple flavor and Celtic sea salt.

I literally had to go buy a Belgian waffle maker for this recipe. It has been a long time since I have made waffles and the old waffle maker I had was never a very good one, so I decided to take the plunge and buy a better model. I don't make waffles enough to warrant splurging on a high dollar model, so I chose a less expensive, but high quality version made by Oster. For $40, I got a safe ceramic coating free from PTFE and PFOA, rather than a more concerning Teflon coating. It also has a light alert to let you know when the waffle is ready to come out. I was pretty happy with my choice. FYI...absolutely nothing stuck to the waffle maker!

On to the recipe... I made some changes to my original recipe, which is a knock off of the famous Waffle House recipe. First I chopped and toasted a cup of pecans. Then I mixed the milks, vanilla, and Lori's Salt Caramel Syrup: 1/2 c. milk, 1/2 c. cream, 1/2 c. buttermilk and 1 T. Lori's Salt Caramel Syrup.

Next I combined the dry ingredients: 1 1/2 c. all purpose flour, 1t. salt, and 1/2 t. baking soda.

The egg got left out of the group picture!

                           

In the large bowl that comes with my mixer, I combined 1 egg and 1/2 c. plus 1t. sugar, 2 T room temperature butter and 2 T. shortening.  Mix well with mixer until fluffy. Then add the milk mixture and mix well. With the mixer on low speed, spoon the flour mixture into the bowl and mix well.  Add 1/2 c. of the toasted pecans and stir to incorporate.

Following the directions for your waffle maker and cook the waffles.

For the syrup, in a small sauce pan, combine 1 c. of Lori's Salt Caramel Syrup, 2 T. butter and 1/2 c. toasted pecans. Heat thoroughly and serve with waffles.

The result? These were delicious! This recipe is definitely a keeper. My husband did say to tell Lori that one bottle is just not enough to give a thorough review and that we will need a few more bottles to complete our study. Now he is wanting me to use the syrup to make chicken and waffles. Seriously, you should definitely go to Amazon grab a bottle of Lori's Salt Caramel Syrup. It is really good stuff! Let me know if you come up with some original ways to use this sweet and salty syrup.