Healthy Chocolate Waffles (with added greens)
Add a little fun to breakfast with these healthy Chocolate Waffles. Made with whole wheat flour, 2 cups of spinach, and naturally sweetened with maple syrup, these waffles are easy to make. They are perfect for stocking your fridge or freezer, and will win over even the veggie skeptics with how delicious they are!
My family loves waffles and pancakes. Love love loves them. I mean, I get it. We live in Vermont where maple syrup is abundant for drizzling over all the breakfast food and, truthfully, waffles are just dang tasty.
Which is fine by me. Waffles are also a great vessel for veggies (shocking? Stay with me!) and are pretty easy to make. Like these healthy Chocolate Waffles….with spinach!
These Chocolate Waffles are not only healthy because of the 2 cups of spinach blended into the batter, but because they are made with whole wheat flour and are naturally sweetened with coconut sugar. Add in some chocolate chips to sweeten the deal or enjoy them without! Perfect for making as part of meal prep, since it makes a batch of 8 and store in your fridge or freezer beautifully! Naturally vegetarian and nut free, you can easily make these waffles dairy-free by using your favorite plant based milk.
Tips & tricks
If we are going to make waffles, we want them to be perfect. Here are some of my pro tips and tricks for making these chocolate waffles, but are helpful for so many other recipes too!
- Make sure your baking powder isn’t old. Believe it or not, that stuff expires and becomes inactive. These waffles (and other baked goods) will be flat and sad if your leavening agent is bust. To test your baking powder, put a scoop into a small bowl and add a little boiling water. If it starts to bubble right away, you are good to go. If it doesn’t, it’s time to toss your baking powder.
- Spoon or pour flour instead of scooping. There is a right way and a wrong way to measure flour. When you spoon or pour your flour, you introduce air that helps it be fluffy…and thus, your baked good will be fluffy. Scooped flour can be packed in and actually result in using too much flour….and thus, having a dry dense waffle.
- Don’t over mix your batter. For waffles or any baked good. Please! Mixing activates the gluten and can make for dense waffle. Mix until ingredients are just combined. This is truly the secret to fluffy waffles!
- Cook waffles steaming stops. All waffle makers cook at a different temperature, so how long it’ll take your waffles to cook might be different than mine. The way I always tell a waffle is done is when I stop seeing steam coming from the waffle iron.
Did you make these waffles—and now you have leftover spinach you don’t want to go to waste? Check out How to Store Spinach (and keep it fresh all week long).
Suggested Adaptations
Use whatever milk you prefer. I’ve made these with cows milk, almond milk, and oat milk….all with great success. So you can use whatever milk you typically enjoy when making these waffles.
Make these waffles gluten free by using a cup-for-cup gluten free flour blend in place of the white whole wheat flour. This is a brand that I like. (affiliate link)
Skip the chocolate chips to reduce the sugar in these healthy chocolate waffles.
More veggie-loaded breakfast recipes you’ll love!
- Blueberry Zucchini Waffles
- Chocolate Chip Zucchini Muffins
- Blueberry Cauliflower Oatmeal
- Healthy Chocolate Muffins (with veggies!)
- Spinach Cacao Smoothie
- Pumpkin Baked Oatmeal
- Crustless Spinach Sweet Potato Quiche
Did you try this veggie-loaded waffle recipe and now you’re hungry for more?
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Healthy Chocolate Waffles (with greens!)
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups milk
- 2 cups loosely packed spinach
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ cup olive oil or avocado oil
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- ⅓ cup maple syrup, or you can sub honey
- 2 ½ cups whole wheat flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup cocoa powder
- chocolate chips, optional
- Oil spray
Equipment
Instructions
- In a blender, combine milk, spinach, eggs, vanilla, oil, vinegar, and maple syrup. Blend until smooth and spinach is completely pureed. Set aside.
- In a medium-sized bowl, add the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, and cocoa powder. Whisk together to combine.
- Pour the contents of the blender into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Stir until just combined. Do not over mix or your waffles will be dense.
- Stir in the chocolate chips, if using.
- Heat your waffle iron on medium-high. Once it’s ready, spray both sides with oil then spoon about ⅓ cup of the waffle batter onto the iron. Cook until you no longer see steam escaping from the waffle iron and waffles are crisp on the outside, about 4 to 5 minutes (every waffle iron cooks a bit differently, so cook times times will vary from waffle iron to waffle iron). Carefully remove the waffle from the iron and transfer to a plate or cooling rack. Repeat until all batter is cooked.
- Enjoy warm or let cool and store in fridge or freezer for future use!
Easy and delicious!!
So glad you enjoyed them too, Erin! They have been a freezer staple this summer!
How do you reheat them?
I either pop them in the air fryer for a couple minute, in the toaster, or oven because I like a crisp waffle. If you don’t mind them softer, you could microwave them.
In the instructions, step 2, it says to add the baking soda but I don’t see that in the ingredients list.
And thanks for all of your delicious recipes!
Hi Stephanie! Thanks for catching that typo. When I was testing them, I had tried them with baking soda and opted to remove it for the final recipe. Clearly, I missed it in my instructions! Fixed and I am so glad you enjoy our veggie-loaded recipes! That always means a lot to hear.
Yum! No one knew about the greens in these waffles.
So glad you enjoyed, Mindy!
Can I use oat flour instead of whole wheat flour? 2 and 1/2 cups of oat flour?
Maybe? I haven’t tested these with oat flour, but in my experience, oat flour absorbs the same about of moisture as whole wheat flour does in a recipe….so it might work. If you give it a go, let us know how they turn out!
All recipes that I tried including these waffles are healthy and delicious.
So happy to hear that, Kristine!