I discovered the wonderful world of chaffles; a low-carb marriage of the words cheese + waffles.  Seems there are a million chaffle recipes on the internet and most recommend the use of a Dash Mini Waffle Maker, something I didn’t realize existed ‘til a few weeks ago.

Anyhoo, I ordered one—and its Mini Panini Grill sibling—and have been using them almost daily to make low-carb sandwich bread.  They produce a product about the same circumference as a McDonald’s hamburger bun, so they work well for sandwiches, burgers, breakfast sandwiches, individual pizza crusts, taco ‘shells’ and a host of other goodies.

Photo 1: The panini grill (red) and the waffle maker (black)

Photo 2: Money shot

Photo 3: Bread rounds for sandwiches using the panini grill.  Those made in the waffle unit are taller/thicker, but I find I’m liking the panini rounds for sandwiches/burgers. I use waffles for pizza, desserts and chicken Parm,

Photos 4-8: Recipes

The original chaffle recipe consists of 1/2 cup of shredded cheese and 1 large egg whisked together.  This makes two chaffles, but as you can imagine they are pretty ‘eggy’—something that dogs many low-carb/keto bread products.

Now that chaffles have become very popular in the keto world, many recipes for them produce a far less eggy, more bread-like product.  I put a few recipes in the photo section below.

The Dash units themselves are kind of adorable and very simple: Plug it in and when the blue light on the lid goes out, you’re ready to roll.  The preset temp works very well. They’re only 350 watts, so you can use more than one at a time.  I got mine for for $10 each—or $14 if you order from a Prime vendor, because there’s no such thing as truly free shipping.  Either option works out to about the same cost in the end.

A fun little appliance that takes up very little space.  And, of course, you can use them for standard (non keto) recipes, which is probably what they were initially intended for.