So... the Beautiful Wife really likes Monte Cristo sandwiches. We've not found a decent place for that food for a long while. It's kind of an involved sandwich. The original is something like ham, turkey, swiss and american cheese between batter dipped bread, then deep fried to be crisp on the outside, hopefully not saturated in oil and served with some raspberry compote or jam on the side. The sum sometimes being better than the individual ingredients. We no longer have the mini deep fryer that we did in the past and have yet to attempt it in the cast iron pan.
A friend of BW posted on FB that she made a stuffed waffle version of the Monte Cristo, so BW wanted to try it and got the recipe.
Pilsbury Grahms biscuit dough
Swiss cheese
Kraft American cheese
Your choice of deli turkey and deli ham (I got some thin sliced Boar's Head sliced off at the local market)
Raspberry jam
Sandwich the meats between a slice of American and a slice of Swiss cheese. Cut that in 1/2 or 1/4 sections, one each to be used with the biscuit dough.
So biscuit dough, a thin layer of jam, cheese, meat, meat, cheese, a thin layer of jam, biscuit dough
This now goes in the waffle iron
* After it comes out you can sprinkle some powdered sugar on and some raspberries to taste.
*Be advised, a normal waffle iron is NOT recommended for this. Apparently stuffed waffle makers have a rather different hinge and are designed for thicker things like sandwiches instead of just waffle batter. This tidbit was not brought to our attention prior to our attempt this lunch time.
The result when using a Belgium waffle iron is this:
Maybe it would taste better with Crescent roll dough? I would call it a waste of good meat and cheese. If you got the right bite, with more meat/cheese and less biscuit, it was ok, but we won't be making it again. It was better with some maple syrup on it.
It made a huge burned mess on the inside of the waffle iron and broke a part in the handle when BW tried to close it enough to rotate the waffle iron. It's an old, but very high quality, Waring Pro waffle iron that she's had for 20+ years. Naturally they don't sell parts for that model any more. The irons don't come out of the machine for cleaning. I was chipping burned gunk out of that thing for an hour with a golf tee. Mostly, once you got a chunk to lift, it popped out clean. The coating on the irons was not damaged. After a selection of cleaning tools/methods including a toothbrush, its useable again. I may need to re-work the handle in the future, but I disassembled it and removed the broken piece for now and it's functional.
My final comment on this is it's not a good idea to put jam with anything in a waffle iron. The cheese wasn't the issue, but the jam went everywhere and made a burned and sticky mess.