It’s getting to the point that I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t live in Birmingham. There is a creative community here that is bursting at the seems with talent, and I’m so happy to be part of Birmingham Bloggers. (Even if WordPress won’t let me add the BB badge over on my sidebar….can someone please help me with that?) And we also have a food scene that rivals any big city. One of my new favorites is Icebox Coffee. I love cold-brewed coffee, and I really love that I can grab a ready-to-drink bottle anytime I’m near Whole Foods or a Piggly Wiggly here in town, or wash down whatever I’m feasting on at Pepper Place with a big cup of it.
Currently Birmingham Bloggers and Icebox Coffee are hosting a recipe contest, and I thought it’d be fun to see what I could come up with. I spent the better part of a week tossing ideas around before finally settling on coffee waffles…because breakfast food is everything to me.
As I was testing the recipe, the first batch, while it had a good coffee bite, didn’t have that rich, breakfast-y flavor that I wanted. So I threw some blueberries that I had in the batter…good flavor but still not quite right. The second batch I made with buttermilk and they turned out great (no surprise I guess), but I still thought it needed a little more of a coffee kick and little more of a breakfast kick. Which is how I came up with the blueberry topping. I really wasn’t sure how that was going to come together, but I ended up loving it. If you’re more into sweet and less into coffee, definitely throw some maple syrup on top 🙂
Icebox Coffee + Buttermilk Waffles
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 egg
½ cup Icebox Cold Brew Coffee
½ cup buttermilk
¼ tsp vanilla bean paste, or scraped vanilla bean, or even a dash of extract will work
Stir together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. In a small bowl, whisk the egg and then add the coffee, buttermilk, and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, stirring to combine.
Spray your waffle iron with non-stick spray and spoon in about 1/3 cup of batter. That’s it!
Coffee-Blueberry Topping
½ cup Icebox Cold Brew Coffee
½ cup fresh blueberries
½ tsp vanilla bean paste or scraped vanilla bean or vanilla extract
½ tsp granulated sugar
Combine all ingredients into a small saucepan. Stir gently while the mixture heats up, but do not let smash the berries or let them burst. Spoon topping over waffles and serve warm.
Thanks Icebox and Birmingham Bloggers for the fun challenge! Next Thursday night there will be a big Icebox-BB party at Innovation Depot at 6:30, I look forward to seeing some of you there!
