On The 5th Day of Waffle Week-

Viva the Wa-Zone,
as it was named by Rachel Ray. Who knew that having a waffle week was so popular? It turns out that Rachel Ray did so last year. Evidently great minds think alike. : ) My Rachel wanted to have a waffle pizza, so we decided to try one of Rachel's Rays recipes- a calzone cooked in the waffle iron. So, my Rachel and I made pizza dough and we mixed up the cheese filling (ricotta, garlic, provolone, basil, parsley, salt and pepper, and parmesan). I rolled out small circles of dough (my first one was WAY too big!) and a fistful of dough worked out to be about the right amount. I rolled it thin, smeared the cheese mixture in, sprinkled it with mozzarella cheese (we didn't have fresh- but since we're no longer in Naples, it's hard to get excited about American mozzarella), put a bit of pepperoni in Bill's, and a bit of fresh spinach in mine, folded them in half and then sealed the edges with a bit of water, as instructed. We were a bit leary of getting the dough completly done without burning it, so I also turned the oven on. We also thought it might be nice to eat all at once for a change as well. So, as each one was nicely browned, we through it in the oven to finish cooking the thicker edges of dough, while starting the next. Bill hadn't read the directions to not "squish" the iron, so we had a bit of overflow of cheese to contend with.

Earlier I had made a standard Neopolitan style tomato sauce/marinara: Brown several cloves of garlic in a good glug of extra virgin olive oil, add a jar of Italian tomato sauce (POMI works well) and a can of plum tomatoes, a BIG pinch of salt, and at the end throw in some basil. This was fabulous for dipping them in.

Rachel's first words were "Mmmmhhhhhhmmmmm!" So the waffle calzone was a hit with everyone. Alyssa thought it was all a bit too crispy, but that could be due to baking afterwards for too long. We won't know until making a traditional calzone if we prefer the waffle version, or one simply baked in the oven. My hunch is we'll prefer the latter, which would make it much easier to have a better ratio of cheese filling to dough (we didn't have enough cheese inside these). But, this gave me a push to make something different instead of just homemade pizza, and Rachel tried something new, which is always a bonus.

FIRST FAILURE!
I also decided to try Rachel Ray's brownie waffle. It suggests making a brownie mix (I used a Ghiradelli mix) using extra oil and egg, and no water, baking for 10 minutes, letting cool a bit in the iron, and then serving warm. It started to smell like it was burning by minute 4 or so, so I peeked, and it of course separated in two. So I let it keep cooking, and it truly smelled burned by minute 8, when I turned the iron off. As the waffle cooled, it turned hard as a rock and I have a bit of a mess to clean out of the iron. I've cooked the remainder in the oven, which in the end is much more practical, as it would have been a very long process in the waffle iron to cook all the batter. We have raspberries and fresh whipped cream to put on top, and I'm hoping that the lack of water in it won't have changed it too much. But, how bad can brownies be, provided they're not burned? !

Ok, they were ok, but that's it. The serving suggestion of whipped cream with berries soaked in Grand Marnier (plain for the kids), was definitely not my favorite. I like Marnier, but evidently not on my brownies. It would have been much better with some ice cream, though the raspberries were nice. As Alyssa said, the whipped cream needs something more delicate. Or maybe it's that the brownie needs something more substantial. And I have to say that I'm a bit of a brownie snob, and even Ghiradelli doesn't compare to homemade, so I think we can bag these up for school lunches.

The funny thing is I've just found the other blog about waffle week, (hence my having to name this "Wacky Waffle Week", which consists of one short entry, stating that Rachel Ray is a liar about creating fabulous waffles with calzones and brownies. Too funny! Evidently I should have done a bit more homework first.