Five Alternative Uses For Your Waffle Iron

Waffle irons aren't just for waffles. Like many people, I'm not a fan of unitasking tools in the kitchen. I don't have huge amounts of kitchen storage, so I don't want to load it up with a bunch of things that only get used once a year. Waffle irons are practically the unitask archetype. They are reasonably large and you can't use them for anything besides waffles, right? Wrong. As I was reminded by The Kitchn, earlier this week, there are other uses for waffle irons:

1. Make cookies Toss a bit of cookie dough into your waffle iron, and you can have freshly baked cookies in under two minutes. Lifehacker has picked out two recipes for you to use.
2. Falafel Waffles This used to be my specialty. Take a basic falafel recipe and add some flour and egg. The result isn't vegan anymore, obviously, but it works remarkably well and is far healthier than the fried variety. Top it with tahina, tzaziki, or a salad.
3. Leftover Pizza I tried this method for reheating pizza the other day, and it worked brilliantly. If you don't mind your pizza looking funny, I suspect that a minute in the waffle iron would work at least as well.
4. Grilled Cheese You need the right sort of bread for this, but you can use your waffle iron as a sandwich press. The resulting wafflewich is perfect alongside tomato soup. Alternately, cut it up and have some crispy-cheesy croutons for topping your soup (or anything else).
5. Experiment! Try out instant mixes like muffin or brownie mixes. Experiment with rice puddings or ground meat. Unfortunately, I can't experiment at the moment. I haven't seen my waffle iron since I moved. I suspect it is still in Illinois. Eventually, I will get another one, but in the meantime I am depending on you to let me know what works.

...and here's a bonus #6 from Alton Brown: Bacon!