When I’m doing my happy dance in the kitchen, I get accused of having too much fun playing with my toys. Mostly I think of my varied and sundry tools as a valuable part of my kitchen life, but I guess one or two really are toys. Certainly my baby-blue mini-waffle maker qualifies as a toy. At $14.99, I wasn’t too worried about buying a serious appliance that would last a lifetime. I was more concerned with it working once or twice. I’ve now used it four times, and it’s still working. I like playing with my toy.

When I bought it I was think about making chicken and waffles as an amuse-bouche. I also thought about making a waffle version of a crêpe complète, a buckwheat crepe with ham, cheese, and eggs. Mine was to be a gaufre complète. The waffle batter I came up with rose nicely and tasted good, but the waffle maker wasn’t hot enough to make the outside brown and crisp.

So back to the chicken and waffles. I didn’t look at how others had approached the concept. I wanted my own slant. I thought about making a closed-face sandwich with two waffles and an open-faced sandwich with one. Both seemed a tad large for an amuse-bouche. After tossing around many ideas for a couple of days, I decided the best way to make chicken and waffles was to—pun alert—eliminate the middle “and” and just make chicken waffles.

I thought first about using my waffle-patterned silicone mold to provide shape to the waffles. I created a simple ground-chicken mixture, filled the mold cavities with the mixture, froze it in the mold, vacuum packed it, and set it in warm water to cook.

Before the molded chicken had finished cooking, I remembered my toy waffle iron. I pulled it off the shelf, plugged it in, waited a couple of minutes for it to reach full heat, placed a gob of the chicken mixture between the irons, and latched it close. About two minutes later, the sizzling slowed down, the grease was running onto my counter, and my first chicken waffle was done. It looked like a waffle and tasted like chicken. Amazing.

I did finish cooking the ones in the rubber mold, but decided that they wouldn’t get past my breakfast the next morning. I liked the chicken waffle made in the waffle iron. No waffling about it!