THE SYRUP
This is where the story gets pretty personal - traveling the world set this project in motion. The waffles were just the beginning!
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.
We make Waffle mixes too! Check them out here.