Choice Toppings

When deciding to have waffles for Sunday breakfast, the subject of suitable toppings always arises. Unless you are having those divine Belgian waffles where no topping is necessary to augment the zillion butter calories in the basic waffle, you've got to add a little something to make the waffle zing.

Not being sufficiently motivated to make the Belgian kind from scratch, My Beloved and I settled on opening our can of Kona Coast Hawaiian Style Macadamia Nut Pancake and Waffle Mix, which was a gift from a friend. We had to laugh a little at the exotic name as it was packed in American Canyon, CA but we had to admit that, while the nutty macadamia taste was more a promise than a reality, the mix did make nice, light crispy waffles in the waffle iron that my pal Wenirs gave me years ago.

And so to the problem of toppings. We do have a nice big jar of real maple syrup in the fridge, compliments of MB's nephew who brought it all the way from Vermont, but we were in the mood to experiment so I tossed some fresh strawberries and blueberries in a little vanilla sugar I had made a while back, and spooned out a dab each of McEvoy Ranch Meyer lemon marmalade and Stonewall Kitchens Black Raspberry jam onto my plate.

The clear winner was the marmalade. While the fresh fruit was okay, it's not yet strawberry season and it showed. The jam was yummy, too, but just didn't add the punch of the marmalade to the already-pretty-sweet waffles. The marmalade was, as Jimmy Durante would have said with a cigar-chomping grin and a tilt of his schnozzola, "Cherce!"