The Super Simple Way To Turn Leftover Waffles Into A Churro-Esque Snack

If you're someone who loves to try out a new recipe or baked goods, then you probably know that it comes with plenty of mistakes and can yield a lot of leftovers. In fact, even when everything goes according to plan a new recipe can still leave you with too many croissants, muffins, or meatballs for some people to finish in an appropriate time. There are tricks to using up leftovers or stretching their lifespan out there.

Perhaps one of the best ways to use up excess food is to find your local food bank through Feeding America and donate the excess. Some may have certain requirements of foods they'll accept, but it's always important to try and make sure that excess food doesn't go wasted when it can feed someone in need.

Another great way to handle excess food is to reinvent it. You've already got the food, why not dream up something weird and unique? Test the limits of some of your favorite foods to see if they work out as pizza toppings, tacos, or sandwich fillings. The results might be better than you expect.

That's the same process that helped one recipe developer to transform his extra waffles into churros.

For those that haven't had the privilege of tasting these delicious treats, churros are a type of fried dough that is coated in cinnamon sugar. They are most often sold as long star-shaped tubes that make them the perfect side to a cup of hot chocolate and give them wonderfully crisp ridges along the sides for cinnamon sugar to nestle into.

Churros were likely first invented by the Spanish, though this is contested, and there isn't an exact date for their first invention. Because the dough is made by expelling batter through a shaped extruder, similar to how complex pasta shapes are made, it is considered a syringe fritter which was common around Europe in the late middle ages. The name supposedly comes from the Spanish shepherds that first invented the treat. Churros bear a resemblance to the horn of the churra sheep that these shepherds would tend to, and so the treat was named in their honor.

The key to a good churro is to nail the texture. That includes a crisp, crunchy shell with a soft, pillowy interior which is usually accomplished with a fluffy choux dough but has a lot in common with another sweet treat. 

This tip comes courtesy of Cook's Country's Matthew Fairman. After testing out a new waffle recipe he found himself with a heaping pile of those delicious pressed cakes, so he decided to try something new.

The perfect texture for a waffle is to have a crisp exterior courtesy of the hot waffle iron, and a soft, light interior. This is strikingly similar to the churro, and so Fairman decided to turn his waffles into churros. All it takes is cutting the waffles into strips, and coating them with melted butter, and a cinnamon-sugar mixture, and then you've got waffle-churros, chaffles, wurros, or whatever you want to call them.

Another similarity between these two treats is the deep ridges that make them perfect for dipping into chocolate, coffee, or any other sweet liquid that pairs well with cinnamon. So, the next time you want to try something new, or just have more waffles than you know what to do with, whip up some cinnamon sugar, cut them into strips, and enjoy!