How a $13 Waffle Maker Brought Back My Sunday Mornings

For thirty-one years I made Sunday waffles in a kitchen big enough to dance in. Two ovens, an island, a waffle iron the size of a car battery that I'd haul out from the bottom cabinet every week without thinking twice about it. That kitchen is gone now. When my husband Earl and I sold the house in 2023 and moved into a two-bedroom condo near our daughter, I packed that old waffle iron in a box, looked at it for a long minute, and put it in the donate pile. It just wasn't going to fit anywhere in a kitchen with maybe eight feet of counter total.

I told myself that was fine. I told myself a lot of things were fine that year. New place, smaller rooms, fewer people to cook for since it's just me and Earl and our two Yorkies, Biscuit and Pearl, most mornings. But Sunday waffles had been a ritual since our kids were small, and giving it up quietly bothered me more than I let on.

For almost a year, Sundays just became another day. I'd make toast, or eggs, or nothing at all. Earl noticed before I said anything about it. He's like that. One morning he asked, kind of careful, whether I missed the waffles or just the big kitchen that came with them. I sat with that question longer than I expected to.

The answer, it turned out, was the waffles. Not the island, not the eight feet of granite, not hauling out a machine that weighed as much as a bowling ball. I missed the smell of batter hitting a hot iron on a slow morning. So I started looking, half-heartedly, for something that could live in a condo kitchen without taking over a whole cabinet.

That's how I found the DASH Mini Waffle Maker. Thirteen dollars, roughly the size of a small saucer, red enough that my granddaughter noticed it from across the room the first time she visited. I'd seen DASH's little kitchen gadgets in other people's condos before and always figured they were more novelty than workhorse. I almost didn't buy this one because it seemed too small to be worth the trouble. I'm glad I did anyway.

It wasn't the size of the waffle that mattered. It was that Sunday had a shape again.

The first Sunday I used it, I made exactly one waffle. Just one, because that's all the batter I'd mixed, out of habit, not wanting to waste anything on a machine I wasn't sure I'd like. It came out golden and a little crisp at the edges, small enough to eat with my hands standing at the counter, which I did, before Earl even got up. I made a second one for him without asking. He ate it standing next to me, in our socks, in a kitchen that still didn't feel entirely like home yet.

It sounds like a small thing. It was a small thing. But that Sunday felt different than the fifty Sundays before it in that condo. I wasn't mourning the old house. I was just making waffles again, in a kitchen that finally worked for the life we actually have now instead of the one we used to have, and the little DASH machine on the counter had a lot to do with that.

What surprised me most wasn't the taste, though it's a good, honest waffle. It was how little it asked of me. No dragging a heavy iron across the counter. No searching three drawers for the right spatula. I keep the DASH tucked in the cabinet above the coffee maker, and it's out, heated, and ready before the coffee finishes brewing. Cleanup is a damp cloth, maybe two minutes, and it's back in the cabinet before I've even sat down to eat.

Biscuit and Pearl have opinions about waffle mornings too, mostly involving sitting very close to my chair and staring with great patience. I don't share, but I understand the appeal. There's something about a small, warm, freshly made thing that makes a kitchen feel lived in again, even a tiny one.

Earl asked me the other day if I missed the big waffle iron. I told him the truth, which is that I don't think about it anymore. This one does what I actually need, which is make one or two good waffles on a quiet morning without any fuss, and that's really all the old one ever did too. I just didn't need all that size to get there.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you've moved into a smaller place and quietly given up something you used to love doing in the kitchen, I'd tell you this before anything else: it's usually not the ritual that doesn't fit anymore, it's just the equipment. I spent a year thinking Sunday waffles belonged to a kitchen I didn't have anymore. Turns out they just needed a smaller pan. I wouldn't tell you to run out and buy every gadget that promises to fix a downsized kitchen, most of them are more trouble than they're worth and end up in the donate pile just like my old waffle iron did. But if there's one small ritual you miss, one thing that used to make a regular morning feel a little more like yours, it might be worth thirteen dollars and a shelf in a cabinet to find out if it still fits. Mine did, and it's a DASH sitting on that shelf now. I have a feeling yours will too.