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When the guests are on the doorstep, and the mouse hangs itself in the refrigerator, the first thing that the hostess can think of is to run to the nearest store for waffle cakes. Wafer cakes are a versatile semi-finished product, on the basis of which you can quickly prepare many different snacks, meat, fish or sweet dishes.
If we are not talking about the speed of cooking, then you can bake waffle cakes at home. You can no longer call such cakes semi-finished products – bright, tasty, fragrant, which can be eaten without filling. From this article you can find out what are the benefits and harms of wafer cakes, what they are and what can be cooked from them.
Varieties and composition
In stores today you can find wafer cakes of various shapes (rectangular, round, hexagonal), sizes and even colors.
They are made, regardless of external parameters, according to the same technology and practically from the same raw material composition: premium wheat flour, refined sunflower oil, salt and baking powder – baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). However, the list of raw materials is often not limited to this.
To improve the mixing of ingredients, emulsifiers and stabilizers can be added to the dough. To increase the shelf life of semi-finished products, some manufacturers add antioxidants (antioxidants) to the composition of wafers.
Waffles without filling contain 10 g of protein, 4 g of fat and 66 g of carbohydrates per 100 g of the finished product. The calorie content of the semi-finished product is 341 kcal per 100 g.
Advantages and disadvantages
The main advantage of wafer cakes over other semi-finished products is the simplicity and ease of cooking based on them.
The second advantage is their versatility: the neutral taste of the semi-finished product allows you to cook both salty snacks and sweet cakes from them.
You should not abuse the preparation of dishes based on waffle cakes. They themselves contain a lot of calories (341 kcal / 100 g), and the filling will only increase the calorie content of the dish.
To purchase high-quality and fresh waffle cakes, when buying them, you should pay attention to:
- packaging (clean, whole);
- label (data on the manufacturer, composition, expiration date, storage conditions, reference to the regulatory document);
- storage conditions (dry, heated rooms);
- commodity neighborhood (away from strong-smelling products).
The shelf life of these flour products is 3 months. However, this period can be extended by manufacturers who produce products according to technical specifications (TU). To prolong the “life” of semi-finished products, food additives are added to their recipes, which prevent the oxidation of fats in wafers and keep them low in moisture.
Wafer cakes are very fragile, so when choosing them, you need to give preference to transparent packaging, through which you can see if the sheets are intact.
How to cook yourself
You can cook waffle semi-finished products yourself. To bake them, you will need a special electrical device – a waffle iron. To prepare the dough, you need to take premium wheat flour (250 g), refined sunflower oil (1 tablespoon) and water (250 ml). The flour should be sifted before mixing to saturate the dough with oxygen. The ingredients are used to prepare a liquid dough. You can add a pinch of salt or sugar to it.
To get colored cakes, part of the water can be replaced with juice of spinach, beets, carrots, cherries, or food coloring can be added to the finished dough.
After preparation, the dough must be infused for an hour at room temperature. Thus, the gluten will come out of the flour and the dough will become more homogeneous. The heated surface of the waffle iron is smeared with sunflower oil using a confectionery brush, several tablespoons of dough are poured, distributed evenly over the entire surface and each cake is baked for 2-3 minutes.
What to cook
Housewives are very fond of waffle cakes because there is a large assortment of dishes based on them:
- lazy chops or cutlets from fish or minced meat;
- rolls with various fillings;
- snack cakes (from canned fish, herring, liver, mushrooms);
- syrniki;
- waffle cakes and pastries (with butter, cream, protein, custards, condensed milk, jam, jelly).
Herring snack cake is especially popular.
To prepare this festive snack, you will need a pack of waffle cakes, 1 herring, 2 carrots, 2 onions, 300 g of fresh mushrooms (champignons, oyster mushrooms), 200 g of hard cheese, mayonnaise, greens.
Herring is cleaned of skin, bones and entrails, cut into large pieces. One onion is crushed and crushed together with herring in a blender.
Mushrooms and the second onion are cut, fried in vegetable oil, chopped with a blender. Carrots are boiled, rubbed on a coarse grater.
Start assembling the waffle snack cake:
- the cake is smeared with mayonnaise, the first filling is laid out – half the minced herring, evenly distributed;
- the second sheet is greased with mayonnaise, spread half of the minced mushroom on it;
- the third cake is smeared, grated carrots are laid out;
- on the greased fourth sheet spread the rest of the herring mince, on the fifth – the rest of the mushroom mince;
- the final sheet of the semi-finished product is smeared with mayonnaise and sprinkled with grated cheese.
The finished product is covered with a flat plate and pressed with a press with a small weight. To soak the cake, it is left for 2-3 hours in the refrigerator. Garnish with chopped herbs before serving.
For a cake with condensed milk from wafer cakes, you need to take a package of wafer sheets, 1 jar of condensed milk and 1 pack of butter.
The condensed milk is boiled, combined with soft butter, then the cakes are smeared with it. To soak, leave in the refrigerator for 8-10 hours.
Culinary tricks
In order for the cakes to remain crispy after their impregnation, certain rules should be followed:
- the finished impregnation must be chilled;
- the cream for the layer must be beaten well to get a stable foam;
- before using creams based on jams or preserves, pour the wafer base with chocolate ganache and let it harden. After that, no liquid cream will make the cakes soft;
- buttercream should be at room temperature. Butter-based cream does not need to be refrigerated, as the butter for whipping should be soft.
If the hostess wants the wafer cakes, on the contrary, to become soft and juicy, the finished cake must be put under pressure: the speed and quality of impregnation will increase.
In order not to get poisoned, especially in the summer, during the aging of the cake, you need to monitor the temperature at which this happens, and subsequently – the storage temperature of the finished product. All sweet creams (butter, sour cream, protein) require storage at a temperature of + 2 … + 6 ° C, which is achieved by a shelf in the refrigerator. The shelf life of the finished sweets is no more than 36 hours (1,5 days).
When preparing savory snacks, on the contrary, it is necessary that the waffles are soaked and become invisible. To do this, you need to use a warm filling or subject the stuffed wafer sheets to heat treatment – frying.
Snacks, meat and fish dishes, cottage cheese and cream desserts – everything can be made from these sheets. Such dishes not only diversify the daily menu, but are a real decoration of the festive table. Once having tried to cook a dish based on wafer semi-finished products, each housewife will find her favorite recipes with wafer cakes.