Will It Waffle: Figs

I love to use my waffle iron for cooking.  As you know, usually this is for reheating leftovers, as I've told you about my many adventures with waffling leftovers.

But sometimes, I like to just throw random things into the waffle iron.  Not necessarily "leftovers".  Just, anything that you could put on a grill.  Like figs.

Why figs?  Because, I picked a basket of figs (yes, really, I went to a farm, and picked my own figs!), and after two days of eating a ton of fresh figs, I didn't want another fresh fig.  But I couldn't let the final figs go to waste.  They were too precious.

Since I'm me, the first thing that popped into my head was: waffle them!

Did it work?  Amusingly, yeah.

The Original:A slightly overripe fig.

I started with a fig.  Just a fig.  It was slightly past its prime, getting a bit sad looking.

I cut off the stem, and then literally put the entire fig into the waffle iron, whole.  I did nothing else.

Waffled Fig.

After a few minutes, I checked on it.

It had split open under the pressure from the waffle iron.  The sugars all ran out into the waffle grills, creating a bit of warm fig jam.  This was not a bad thing, and I used a chopstick to pluck out the jam.

The fig itself got crispy on the outside, yet soft, warm, and gooey inside.  The sugars that ran out also caramelized around the outside.  A really fun combination of textures.

It really was better than this fig would have been plain.  Crispy, caramelized, sweet, gooey.

I put in a second fig, and let it go a bit too long, so it got, uh, very caramelized.  Just a touch too much, not horrible, and Ojan said it tasted like creme brûlée .  Mmm.  Creme brûlée.  Also not a bad thing.

I consider this experiment a success.  If you ever have fresh figs, and get a bit sick of eating them fresh, throw them on the waffle iron!