Find yourself in the mood for waffles but you are all out of baking powder? Do not fear! Let me show you how to make delicious waffles without the baking powder.

So you are out of baking powder but the mood strikes for waffles. What do you do? I had this problem myself, so I set out to test a non-baking powder method for making waffles. Did it work? You bet it did.

Two waffles sitting on a white plate. One waffle is whole, the other one has been cut into pieces. The plate has a fork and knife on it and is sitting on a red plaid towel.

Why Do You Need Baking Powder?

Baking powder is used to give the waffle some lift. But you will also notice that in most recipes, mine included you also need baking soda, which does that as well.

Let’s look into this, but first we need to answer the question – What is commonly found in baking powder?

Corn starch
Sodium bicarbonate
Monocalcium phosphate

What is the corn starch for? It’s added to prevent caking. It doesn’t act as any leavening. Sodium bicarbonate is baking soda. Monocalcium phosphate is an acid that is there to create a reaction with baking soda. This reaction products the gas “carbon dioxide” which is what will give us the lift we want in a waffle.

A cartoon waffle looking confused with a thought bubble that reads "why do recipes call for both baking powder and baking soda"

So why then you do you need both baking soda and baking powder in recipes? Often baking soda isn’t enough on it’s own to do the leavening, you need to add acid that comes in the baking powder to produce another reaction.

What to Do If You Have No Baking Powder

You can make your own homemade baking powder with a combination of corn starch, baking soda, and for the acid, cream of tartar is a lot easier to find than monocalcium phosphate. Use 2 parts cream of tartar, 1 part baking soda, and 1 part corn starch.

But if you don’t have cream of tartar either then let me show you what you can do instead. You will need acid to react with the baking soda. For that I suggest an ingredient that is cheap and that most of us should have right now – white distilled vinegar.

You don’t want the vinegar to mess up the flavor, so you want something that doesn’t have any or hardly any flavor to it.

What I do is add the vinegar directly to the milk I am using. I add 1 tablespoon of vinegar to my measuring cup and then measure out the milk to get to one cup. So basically you are replacing 1 tablespoon of the milk with 1 tablespoon of vinegar.

I also add more baking soda than normal. So I double it in my recipe from 1/4 teaspoon to 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda.

Now I am still not done yet tinkering with the recipe. I want to lighten up the batter more to help give it a better rise. To do that instead of adding a whole egg, I separate the eggs and then whip the white separately before folding it in so that my batter looks like this:

A large metal mixing bowl filled with waffle batter that is ready to be cooked. There is still some lumps but no dry flour.

This is how I want my batter to look. I don’t want it to be perfectly smooth. If you mix a batter too much you will get too much gluten production and your waffles will be tough. My goal is mixing a batter to just bring it together until there is no more dry flour and then just walk away from it.

Waffles Without Baking Powder

Waffled Together Family

Learn how you can still make waffles even if you are lacking baking powder at the moment. All you need is vinegar and a hand mixer to whip egg whites. I made this recipe using a mini waffle maker and it made 9 mini waffles.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 5

Course Breakfast

Cuisine American

Servings 9 mini waffles

Ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 tbsp pure cane sugar
1 cup whole milk minus 1 tablespoon
1 tbsp white distilled vinegar
4 tbsp salted butter
1 large egg separated
extra butter for greasing the waffle maker

Instructions

In a large mixing bowl combine: the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Mix well.
Melt the butter in the microwave and allow a few minutes to cool.
Add 1 tablespoons of white vinegar to a measuring cup then add enough milk to get to 1 total cup. You also could measure out 1 cup of milk and then remove 1 tablespoon of it.
Take the egg and separate the yolk and the white. Add the yolk in with the milk and vinegar. Put the white into a mixing bowl.
Whip the white with a hand mixer until a stiff peak has formed when you turn the mixer upside down.
Add the melted butter into the milk mixture.
Mix it all together until it is just combined and there is no dry flour. Don't worry about it being lumpy, the lumps will cook out. You don't want to overmix the batter.
Gently fold in the whipped egg white into the batter.
Heat up your waffle maker.
Once the waffle maker is hot. Brush butter on both top and bottom of the waffle maker then add your batter. Cook until the light goes out. Repeat this until you have cooked all the waffles.
You can keep waffles warm in an oven sit to the lowest temperature. Don't stack the waffles or they could get soggy.

Syrups to Use on These Waffles

Here are some ideas for syrups to pour onto these waffles.

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