Belgian Liege Waffles _ BEST Waffles Ever!!

If you want to learn how to make the best waffles you've ever tasted , then you need to watch this video .

My name is Tessa and I'm from handle the heat dot com where I love to share homemade baking recipes and kitchen tips and tricks .

And today I could not be more excited to be showing you how to make the best Belgian Leche waffle .

These waffles are absolutely out of this world and usually when we make waffles , we make a batter .

But with this recipe , we're actually going to be making a dough with yeast and with pearl sugar and the pearl sugar is really what elevates these waffles to a whole new level .

They have bites of crunchy , caramelized sugar throughout , but are super light and fluffy inside and you can make them totally decadent and over the top with any toppings , fruits , candies , whipped cream , ice cream , whatever your heart desires , it's totally customizable .

So if you want to learn how to make the best Belgian niche waffles , be sure to watch this video all the way to the end for my best tips and tricks .

So to get started in the bowl of my stand mixer .

I'm adding half a cup of lukewarm whole milk .

A third , a cup of lukewarm water , two large eggs which I've just beaten and those are at room temperature .

Three teaspoons of instant yeast .

And if you click on my site in the description box below , I'll have tips on how you can substitute active dry yeast for the instant yeast .

I also added in two tea tablespoons of honey and three tablespoons of light brown sugar , a splash of vanilla and lastly three quarter teaspoon of fine salt .

I'm just going to give this a good stir and then begin gradually adding in three and two thirds cups of bread flour .

Now you can use all purpose flour here , but I prefer bread flour because I think it gives the waffles better structure and shape and a better chewy texture .

I added in all but one cup of my bread flour because we're going to add in that last cup later on .

But with the dough hook , I'm just getting started on bringing the dough together into a cohesive ball .

And once it comes together , I actually have two sticks of unsalted butter which are cubed and at room temperature .

And I'm going to slowly add one piece of butter at a time mixing and letting it incorporate before I add the next piece .

If you've ever made brioche .

Uh This is kind of the same method .

This is really what's going to give the waffles a super rich and flavorful taste and texture .

And it does take a little bit of patience because it's kind of a , a long process , but it is so worth it .

And this is also actually the reason why I much prefer to make this dough in a stand mixer .

As opposed to doing it by hand , it's much , much easier to make in a stand mixer .

So as you can see the dough is starting to come together , I'm just going to add the remaining cubes of butter until they're all gone and then add in my remaining one cup of bread flour .

I'm going to need this on low speed until the dough is smooth and elastic and this will take about another five minutes .

So it's quite a long kneading process .

But again , it is so worth it .

Once that's all done , I'm going to remove my dough to a lightly greased bowl , cover it and let it rise until doubled .

It'll take about two hours depending on the temperature of your kitchen .

Once it's doubled , I'm actually going to press it down , punch it down , cover it again with plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge overnight or up to 24 hours .

Again , this is kind of a recipe where you need um a little bit more time and patience , but it's such a fun weekend baking project .

So into the fridge that goes and the next step after the 24 hour period or the overnight period in the fridge is to add in pearl sugar .

Now , this is Belgian pearl sugar we're adding in 1.5 cups and this is pretty difficult to find .

So Amazon is probably going to be your best bet , but you can also use sugar cubes that you've broken up into pieces .

So it might seem like a lot of pearl sugar , but it will all get needed into the dough and you do need to use all of it to get the best texture .

What happens is the pearl sugar kind of Caramelizes as the waffles cook and you just get these bits of kind of crunchy , caramelized sugar in every bite of every waffle .

And it's absolutely amazing .

It's what makes these so good .

So now I'm just cutting the dough up into 10 equal pieces and I'm going to roll each piece into a nice ball and this is actually exactly what the dough looks like .

It's kind of strange to cook a dough waffle instead of like a waffle made from batter .

But it's pretty cool and it gives you such a unique texture .

It's kind of a combination of bread meets waffle , meets caramel .

It's absolutely amazing if you've never had it before .

So when you're ready to cook , just preheat a Belgian waffle iron and each waffle will take about 4 to 5 minutes to cook .

If you are planning on freezing these for later , you want to cook them for about a minute less so that when you reheat them , they don't get overcooked .

And as you continue to cook , the waffles sugar will develop in your waffle iron .

So you might want to get a wad of dam paper towels to kind of clean it out .

Just be really careful because the waffle iron will obviously be hot .

I love to serve my Belgian waffles with nutella berries like strawberries or raspberries or even bananas and a dollop of whipped cream on top .

It is mind boggling .

How good these are .

It's one of my favorite desserts or special occasion breakfast .

Look how beautiful .

All right guys .

So that's exactly how you make Belgian Leche waffles .

I really hope you try this recipe out soon for us .

There's only the two of us .

So we have tons of leftovers .

I like to actually keep them in the freezer so we can have Belgian Leche waffles whenever we're craving them .

What I do is I place the cooked waffles , I shave off about a minute of cooking time just so that they don't get overly browned and overcooked when I go to reheat them later .

But basically I put the finished waffles on a baking tray and pop that in the freezer and let them freeze until they're nice and solid .

Then I'll go ahead and transfer them to a zip lock bag .

And the reason I do that is because I don't want the waffles to get all stuck together and frozen together and they'll stay good for about two months in the freezer though .

I doubt they'll last that long if you even have any leftovers to begin with and you can reheat the waffles in a 200 degree oven until they're nice and warm through .

And just remember these waffles should always be served nice and warm or hot because when the pearl sugar starts to cool off , it will harden .

And so the best texture is served at a nice hot temperature .

I really hope you enjoyed this video .

If you did be sure to give it a thumbs up and let me know in the comments below what your favorite waffle toppings are .

Thank you so much for watching .

Don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you next time .