THE SYRUP
This is where the story gets pretty personal - traveling the world set this project in motion. The waffles were just the beginning!
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The truth is, we only started making our own syrup because we had to. We were living in Cameroon (West Africa) from 2010-2012 and we wanted to keep making our waffles... but alas, we couldn't find syrup to buy. I remembered that it was possible to make simple syrups from boiling sugar water and that is where the story began. We made a vanilla syrup that was really nice on ice cream - but not amazing as a pancake syrup. When we were able to get back to the US for the summer, I decided to go to the grocery store and pick up some maple flavoring to start experimenting with it and created a delicious syrup... until we tried to save it. It would crystallize really quickly and in the fridge? Forget it. Instant rock candy! Someone told me that I needed to add an acid to keep it from hardening and that is when I started playing with all different types of acids - lemon juice, vinegars, you name it. Because vinegar isn't altogether nice to taste in this particular application, I started looking at different types and that is when on a whim I solved all of my problems. Balsamic Vinegar! I make carrots and sweet potatoes sometimes with a balsamic + brown sugar reduction and I remembered thinking, "I wonder if Balsamic vinegar would be nice in the syrup..." and the rest is history.
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We make Waffle mixes too! Check them out here.