Malted Protein Waffles with Toasted Oats

I wish you could smell these warm, toasty waffles right now. They are not super sweet, have perfectly crunchy outsides and tender, moist insides-just perfect even to eat plain. I ran this recipe, using low fat cottage cheese and skim milk, through a nutritional calculator (myfitnesspal) and it showed that two waffles have 158 calories, 2 grams of fiber, 4 grams of fat, 4 grams of sugar, 20 g carb and a whopping 11 grams of protein.

Ingredients (makes 8 3x3 or 4x4 waffles):

1 cup old fashioned oats

1 cup cottage cheese

2 Tablespoons original malted milk powder (like Carnation®)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

3 Tablespoons milk (your choice of dairy/non-dairy)

Directions:

Toasting the oats (you can totally skip this step, but I like the toasty flavor): Preheat oven to 250 degrees F and spread the oats out on a baking sheet. Toast in the oven for 5 minutes, stir and then toast for another 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool.

Place the cottage cheese, malted milk powder, baking powder, egg, vanilla and milk in a blender and blend until completely smooth.

Prepare your waffle iron as you normally would. Scoop ½ cup of the waffle batter into the iron and let cook for 4 minutes (my waffle iron makes two small [about 3x3 inch] waffles at a time, so ¼ cup in each section).  Remove to a plate and continue making waffles until all the batter is used. Top with nut butter, fresh berries, butter and/or maple syrup.