Do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell?

I will let you in on a secret.  I am not all sunshine and roses and unicorns and cupcakes all the time.  I have my faults.  Sometimes I am annoying.  Sometimes I am unnecessarily petulant when my annoying behavior is rebuffed.  After I am done feeling sorry for myself and being petulant I do apologize.  For what it is worth I can usually recognize unsavory behavior in myself.  And 99.5% of the time I will apologize.  (I'm not 100% perfect, so I probably don't always apologize).  But I do have my positives.  Like waffles.  Yeasty, crusty, fluffy, waffles with just a hint of sweetness.

Every week I ask boyfriend if there is anything special he wants for the week (aside from cookies, either store bought or scratch made those are a given to the point that they are not considered "special" any more), or if there is anything I haven't made in a while that he wants.  Some weeks it is chicken soup.  Others it is something involving bacon.  Pizza is always welcome, though not necessarily requested.  Because he gets up for work super early he doesn't usually have breakfast, but he loves breakfast foods.  Needless to say brinner (breakfast for dinner) is a given almost once a week around here.  Brinner offers me the variation I crave in my diet and offers boyfriend all the breakfast foods he is missing out on.  Usually it is pancakes.  He can eat pancakes like he's getting paid.  Last time it was some killer french toast (my secrets - use ridiculous bread, most people usually recommend challah or brioche.  I used a loaf of Portuguese sweet bread.  Other secret: I use french vanilla coffee creamer instead of milk in my custard mixture).  This time boyfriend asked for waffles.  It just so happens that I own a waffle iron, so I was game.  I was poking around for a waffle recipe that was different  enough to keep me interested and familiar enough to convince boyfriend to eat them.  I definitely succeeded.  If you're looking for a dessert waffle recipe, this is definitely not for you.  The only thing to lend any sweetness to it is maple syrup.  It is a yeasted waffle so it requires a little patience and pre-planning, though nothing crazy.

2 cups AP flour
2 eggs
1 1/12 cups warm milk
1 1/2 ts active yeast
1 ts vanilla
3/4 ts salt
6 tb melted butter
2 tb maple syrup

Mix all ingredients together and cover bowl with plastic wrap.  Leave at room temp at least one hour so the yeast can do its thing.  NB: the longer you leave the batter hanging out, the more of a nutty, yeasty almost umami flavor will develop.  And after sitting out for an hour, if not using straight away, stick it in the fridge.  After the hour the batter will be kind of bubbly and slightly thicker.  It reminded me of looser, runnier pizza dough.  My particular waffle iron took slightly less than 3/4 of a cup per waffle and produced 7 waffles from this recipe.  I enjoyed mine with butter and raspberry jam and boyfriend drown his in maple syrup.  And when you're topping your waffles like that do you really need more sweetness in the waffle itself?