Gluten Free Waffles (Dairy Free and Egg Free)

Homemade waffles are the perfect weekend breakfast or brunch treat! Our waffles are gluten free, dairy free, and egg free, and delicious. Crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, these are perfect with dairy free butter and maple syrup.

There’s nothing like hot waffles on Saturday or Sunday mornings with melty dairy free butter and maple syrup on top!

I’ve actually been wanting to create and share some waffle recipes with you all for a few years, but like a lot of things on my recipe wish list, I didn’t get to creating this recipe until just recently.

We didn’t make that many waffles at home for a long time since we just had an old and antique cast iron waffle maker. I do love cast iron, but it can be touchy and needs a good bit of oil to keep the seasoning in tact and prevent the waffles from sticking.

I was also a little worried about my allergy friendly waffles sticking worse than regular waffles to the iron ? Sometimes recipes that are gluten free and egg free are unpredictable when it comes to sticking to pans.

But we finally bought a modern electric waffle iron so we could make some of these gluten free, dairy free, and egg free waffles! These are nice and crispy on the outside and springy and tender on the inside.

How to make gluten free waffles without dairy and eggs

This recipe is slightly based off of our gluten free and dairy free buttermilk pancake recipe. We added a bit of vinegar to our dairy free milk to create a type of “buttermilk” that reacts with the baking soda to add more air to the batter.

Here are the steps to make our allergy friendly waffles (the full recipe card is at the end of this post!):

• Preheat your non-stick waffle iron.
• In a large bowl, whisk together the gluten free flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
• Add xanthan gum if you are using a baking mix that doesn’t include xanthan gum.
• In a small bowl, whisk together the dairy free milk, oil, and vinegar.
• Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and whisk together until mixed well.
• Your waffle batter should be rather thick.
• Pour batter into your hot waffle iron according to the amount that your waffle iron will hold. We pour 1 measuring cup of batter into our Belgian waffle maker.
• Spread the batter in the waffle iron a bit if needed.
• Cook in the waffle iron for 4 to 4-1/2 minutes. Once it’s done cooking, you’ll notice that there isn’t much steam escaping the iron anymore.
• Top with your favorite dairy free butter and toppings.

We used a Belgian waffle iron for our waffles that made large waffles, but this recipe should work in a smaller waffle iron, too. Just use a smaller amount of batter and cook according to your waffle iron directions (it should still be about 3-4 minutes).

These waffles freeze well, just let them cool completely before putting them in a freezer bag or freezer safe container for freezing. I split mine into quarters before freezing so I could easily take out as many or as few waffles as I felt like having in the moment.

If you keep our leftover waffles outside the freezer, you can store them at room temperature for 1-2 days, or in the fridge for 3 days. They are a bit more dry the following day after making them, so I’d warm up any leftover waffles a bit before adding your dairy free butter and toppings.

A note about the flour we used

We used the King Arthur all purpose gluten free baking mix in this recipe. Their gluten free all purpose baking mix isn’t the same as their gluten free all purpose flour.

The King Arthur gluten free all purpose baking mix has xanthan gum and salt added, but their gluten free all purpose flour does not have those things added.

Check your gluten free flour and make sure it has xanthan gum in it for this recipe, that will act as the binder in this recipe instead of eggs. If you are using an all purpose flour that doesn’t have xanthan gum in it already, add 1/2 teaspoon of xanthan gum to this recipe.

Every brand of gluten free flour absorbs water a bit differently, so you may need to adjust the amount of water in this recipe if you use a different brand. The batter is quite thick with the flour we used, but it cooks up best that way. If it is too thin, it will try to stick to the waffle iron.

We haven’t tried this recipe with an egg replacer instead of xanthan gum for those of you who can’t have xanthan gum, but we will do some recipe testing to come up with something that doesn’t include xanthan gum as well.

Can I use a cast iron waffle maker?

We haven’t tried this recipe in a cast iron waffle maker yet. It should work fine in a cast iron waffle maker that’s well oiled, but we stuck with our non-stick waffle maker for these since I wasn’t sure if the batter would stick or not.

If you want to try this with a more natural pan without non-stick coatings, just make sure that your cast iron waffle maker is well oiled since I’m not sure if this batter will stick to cast iron yet. If we test this recipe with our cast iron waffle pan, I’ll add an update to this!

Check out our other breakfast recipes:

• Gluten Free Coffee Cake with Pears
• Instant Pot Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal
• Scrambled Egg Cups
• Gluten Free Cranberry Orange Scones
• Gluten Free Baked Oatmeal
• Homemade Turkey Breakfast Sausage