Eggo Waffle Shortage Continues

Leggo your Eggo: There's a waffle shortage
Kellogg is rationing its Eggo products due to flooding and equipment problems at two bakeries. The shortfall could last through mid-2010.



NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Better hoard your Eggos!

Grocery stores will be experiencing a shortage of the waffles until mid-2010 due to problems at two bakeries, a Kellogg's spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

Flooding at an Atlanta bakery during heavy rains in October forced Kellogg (K, Fortune 500), which makes Eggo products, to shut down production temporarily, said company spokesman Kris Charles. Plus, equipment at Kellogg's largest waffle facility, based in Rossville, Tenn., needs extensive repairs.

"We are working around the clock to restore Eggo store inventories to normal levels as quickly as possible," Charles said in an e-mail.

Remaining inventory will be rationed to stores across the country "based on historical percentage of business."

Production figures are confidential, Charles said, but added that all lines are operational except for several lines at the Rossville plant.

Chad, a grocery manager at King Soopers in Denver who declined to give his last name, said his store is "seeing some shortage, but not much." A Kroger in Jackson, Miss., was also experiencing shortages, according to a manager in the frozen foods sections. At Fairway in New York City, Eggos were in full supply, however, according to a manager at the Brooklyn location.

The production problems will also affect other Eggo products, including pancakes, syrup and other breakfast food. To alert customers, Kellogg has placed a warning to customers on top of its Eggo Web site and placed notices in some grocery stores.

Waffle Cookie Revisited

You should read my previous post entitled 'Waffle Cookie Success'. Using the receipe and waffle iron described there, I tested different cooking times. Too long, the cookie is overly crunchy or even burned. Too short, it can be gummy and very tough to get out of the iron in one piece. I had the best results using 2 minutes 45 seconds with 21 grams (3/4 ounce) of dough. This is a rounded teaspoonful. After this time, open the iron, turn it over, and shake the cookies (4 of them in quarters of the little Belgian iron) onto the counter. Let them cool for a few minutes before you try to handle them. This makes a good cookie, crunchier than the normal chip cookie because of the waffle indentations.

Waffle Cookie Success

After some false starts, I had waffle cookie success.

The Batter

From an old Joy of Cooking, with modifications.

Whisk together:

1 Cup plus 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

Beat until fluffy and well-blended

1 stick unsalted cow butter from a cow

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

Add and beat until well blended:

1 large egg

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 and 1/2 teaspoon real vanilla (no cheap stuff)

Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture until well blended.

Stir in:

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup pecan pieces

To bake (this is tricky. Undercook falls to bits, overcook burns.):

I used a new little round Black and Decker Belgian waffle iron. 20 bucks on

sale at Kohls. Brush with cooking oil, and heat the iron. Put a big heaping teaspoonful into each quarter of the iron. Press closed, and bake for four and a half minutes. This will vary for different irons. Open the iron, turn it over, and dump the cookies onto a plate. Don't try to dig them out with a fork. They will be very soft, so let them cool a little before handling.

When cool, they have full chocolate cookie flavor plus a nice waffle crunch that

Mom's cookies never had.

Waffle Iron Cookie: Fail!!!

I started out with Nestlé Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and the waffle iron on a medium temperature setting.

I placed fairly flat average sized portions of cookie dough into the iron after giving it a spritz of cooking spray to make sure the treats wouldn't stick. I let the cookies cook for exactly 90 seconds.

They looked good, but simply wouldn't come out of the iron in solid pieces. They began to burn on the bottom. Fail!!!

It's possible you could use a cooler iron and let them cook a little less time and then pull the plug and allow the cookies to cool in the iron and harden a bit so you could pull them out easier. It may be that the store-bought cookie dough was the reason for the failure. In the end, it doesn't matter. This will be my first and last waffle cookie experiment.

Wafffle Iron Cookies

The following out of Fine Cooking Magazine. Waffle iron cookies. Erin is a doubter. I want to try it. Maybe Dad or Robert will give it a shot as well and report back to the blog.



"We don't have a waffle iron. It's one of those small appliances that's only good for one thing, and we don't eat that one thing often enough to warrant owning one.
But if we could use it to make cookies? Maybe we'd reconsider.
We saw this tip at Fine Cooking and were immediately intrigued. Crispy, chewy, thick oatmeal chocolate chip cookies baked in 90 seconds, just like a waffle." -The Kitchen Blog citing Fine Cooking Magazine referencing a cookbook called Dessert Express