Cuisinart Belgian Maker with Pancake Plates Waffle Iron, Single, Silver,WAF-300P1

Great Waffles! Received yesterday. Family loves waffles and this maker works great! Only comment is that maker directions says to use 1 1/2 cups of batter but you need to use more. Going to try pancakes and eggs next. 5 Great multi-use machine Just got it 2 days ago and the waffles were perfect and I am in love with its ability to cook eggs for my breakfast sandwiches! Just remember to use oil or butter for the bottom pan when making the eggs. I added butter and broke the yokes so that they would cook more evenly (I don't like runny eggs). They turned out perfect in about 2 minutes. 5 Hey,it's a Cuisinart with Cuisinart build quality! I took the time to read the reviews carefully after experiencing several big box store bargain waffle makers meltdown after only a fews months of use. The cause,suspected water leaking into the machine while cleaning them. The solution:A waffle maker that has removable griddle surfaces. The answer:The Cuisinart WAF-300! Got it well packaged,read the directions,wiped off the griddle plates,set the darkness to about halfway. Poured the batter,and just like that,the result:A perfect waffle! Light brown on the outside,chewy on the inside! Sure,you can spend a few hundred more for the top of the line waffle maker,but those do not have removable griddle plates! In my humble opinion,this model is perfect for home use! 5 Very disappointed! I am extremely disappointed with this waffle iron! I ordered one expecting it to be a quality item which it is not. It overcooks the middle of the top and cooks the bottom well. Thinking I had gotten a dud, I ordered another and it cooked just as poorly as the first. Buy another brand! 1 Great to make authentic Liege Belgian waffles! After traveling to Brussels last year, I have been looking to buy a waffle maker that I could use to make authentic Liege Belgian waffles with pearl sugar. Regular waffle makers don't get hot enough to crystalize the pearl sugar or it is next to impossible to clean off the sugar residue. This waffle maker delivered!!!! We used a yeast dough recipe with pearl sugar and made the waffles on setting 4 and they were perfect! I felt like I was back in Brussels, eating a Liege waffle! And I just popped the removable plates, which were covered in burnt-on sugar into the dishwasher (bottom rack) without rinsing and they came out sparkling clean. Great product and I would highly recommend! 5 Five Waffles In And I'm In Love I just got this today and decided to make waffles for dinner to try it out. I used a mix, didn't even bother with homemade batter. The waffles were amazing! Perfectly cooked and gorgeous.A touch over 1.25 cups of batter was perfect (the directions said 1.5 cups, but that overflowed the waffle maker and made a mess). As per the instructions, I spread the batter gently to the sides and corners before closing the lid.The timer starts automatically when I close the lid - there's nothing I have to remember to set. I didn't use any oil or spray on the waffle plates at all, and every waffle came off beautifully [see edit at bottom of review]. In fact, even though I made five waffles, the plates look like they weren't even used.The plates reheat very quickly so that there's really no down time between waffles - by the time I got a waffle out and onto a dinner plate the "ready" light was back on. I played around with the temperature a bit, and the perfect waffles seemed to be between 5 and 6. Each waffle took about five minutes to cook.I can't wait to experiment with other batters, and with the pancake plates. The instruction book says that you can make eggs in the pancake molds, which would be perfect for breakfast sandwiches.Edited on 4/11/14: After 3 or 4 uses (and washes) the plates were no longer non-stick, even though I washed them VERY carefully (top rack). It still makes absolutely tasty and beautiful waffles, but now I use a silicon pastry brush to carefully brush some vegetable oil on the plates before I make each waffle (wear a kitchen apron - your shirt may get spattered with a few drops of oil). This gives the waffles a delicious crispness on the outside, so I guess it isn't all bad.I personally wouldn't use a non-stick spray. I've found with other appliances that it builds up horribly and leaves a sticky mess. The oil washes off well. 4 Love, Love, Love! Words can't say how much I love this waffle maker. Why on earth aren't they all made with removable plates??I've always insisted on waffle makers that make 4 standard square waffles at a time, so that I can quickly cook for the whole family. But after years of battling the cleanup process on 2 previous waffle makers, I begged my hubby for this one for my birthday. Here's what I love the most:1. The plates are very nonstick. I still brush a little melted butter on them, because you have to have a little fat for every nonstick surface on the market (either seasoning them after washing or right before cooking), and the waffles have yet to stick. Granted we've only had it for 3 months, but we've used it a LOT in those 3 months.2. The plates are pretty easily removed, come very clean in the dishwasher, and have held up thus far for the last 3 months.3. The bottom of the waffle maker is angled inward!! I had no idea how cool this was until I accidentally made it overflow with batter (my fault, not the waffle maker's). The batter dripped onto my counter top instead of baking onto the outside of the waffle maker like it did with my previous waffle makers. The counter top is exponentially easier to clean than the side of the waffle maker, so this is more helpful than I could have ever dreamed.4. I never thought I'd use the pancake plates, but my 2 year old loves pancakes, so I've actually used them a lot.5. At first, I didn't think it made crispy waffles, either, but then I realized that the dial went higher than setting 4, and that made them crisper (I was in a hurry, and I didn't read the directions or look closely enough). The waffles turn out beautifully every time.6. Yes, the beep is a bit loud, but I love it. No matter how crazy things get in the house, I can always hear it, and I never over-bake my waffles now.Here's what I might change if I was in charge of product development:1. The outside of the waffle maker does get hotter than I was hoping, which means you have to be more vigilant with yourself and kids.2. I think that the little wells in the pancake plate might be helpful if making eggs for breakfast sandwiches (which I've not tried), but for pancakes, they don't seem to help too much. They don't let you control the size of your pancakes, and they make it a bit more difficult to get the spatula underneath the pancakes to flip/remove them. In addition, I'd love to see the waffle maker open up flat so that you could make pancakes on both plates at the same time like a griddle (as one previous reviewer mentioned).All in all though, those little things aren't a big deal, and I would buy this again in a heartbeat, because it's the best I've ever owned.UPDATE!!We've now had this waffle maker for almost a year, and it's still going strong! We've had no issues whatsoever (knock on wood), and we use the waffle maker at least once every 3 weeks. I also wanted everyone to know that I tried the pancake plates to make eggs for breakfast sandwiches, and it worked out great (way better than making pancakes on them)! We made, from start to finish, 12 breakfast sandwiches in 11 minutes. Not bad, huh? By the time the biscuits were done baking in the oven, all the eggs were done, too. I probably should have read the directions for this, but we were in a hurry, so I randomly chose setting #3, and it worked well. Still loving this machine! 5