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This review was last updated in November 2022. If you’re a big fan of waffles, buying a waffle maker rather than eating out could be a worthwhile investment. While it’s possible to make something resembling a waffle on a griddle pan, nothing matches the airy texture and golden crunch of one made in a good waffle machine. When buying a waffle maker, the first thing you should do is decide what style of waffle you want to make. Belgian or American waffles and the other that produce flatter Scandi-style waffles.
The latter are still crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle but they’re not as big and fluffy. If you like waffles but don’t eat them frequently, a multipurpose snack machine might be a better option than a single purpose waffle maker. These tend to double up as toasted sandwich or panini makers. We used our triple-tested waffle recipe to put electronic waffle makers through their paces. We made several batches of waffles and compared consistency of results. When waffle machines had multiple functions, including toastie and panini functions, we tested these too.
Read on to discover our top buys. For over 200 buyer’s guides, visit our product reviews section and find guides to everything from the best regular toasters and best sandwich toasters to the best bread machines. Lakeland will enable you to make a batch of four at a time. This has a clever design to avoid spillage.
Mess is a bit of an occupational hazard when making waffles as it’s all too easy to ladle just a little too much mixture into the machine, which duly squelches out when cooking. The Lakeland machine has deep ridges at the sides so if you do put too much in, it will leak there rather than out on to your worktop. This waffle maker is easy to use, with a red light to show it is heating up which switches to green when it is ready. Results were good with thick, evenly cooked waffles produced at a reasonable speed. This is a cheerful, fun and fairly inexpensive machine that produced decent waffles reasonably quickly. It’s long and slim so ideal for small kitchens short on worktop space. Given the high standards of our samples, we didn’t find the waffles were noticeably more evenly cooked than others but the end result was good quality waffles.
One downside was that we found it quite hard to clean the machine if you overfill it. Read our full review of the American Originals Flip Over waffle maker. Read our full review of the American Originals flip over waffle maker. Solid, heavy and no-nonsense, this is a waffle maker for the true waffle enthusiast. The name Breville is synonymous with sandwich makers and its waffle maker is built along the same lines.
Every detail has been thought of from the easy to remove, washable plates to clear indicators and a heavy-duty non-stick coating on the plates. Sizeable and thick, they are crunchy on the outside while soft on the inside. This is not the quickest machine, taking just over four minutes to heat and seven minutes to produce waffles. It looks like a sandwich maker so if you have one of those too, you might accidentally grab the wrong one. Its small footprint makes it easy to store while it doesn’t take up too much space on the worktop.