To celebrate such a delicious day, I wanted to dive into my first recipe comparison as part of a series called Variations from the Vault. Having a variety of cookbooks that span so many years of Disney Park food history means that I have duplicate recipes. This would seem like a waste or fairly boring, until you realize that over the years, Disney sometimes refines and alters their recipes based on current tastes and trends in the cooking industry, using margarine instead of butter for an example. My goal with these recipe comparisons is to examine all the recipes, check if there are any variations and, if so, test them to see if we can come up with the superior recipe.
Today’s recipe comparison is the ever popular Belgian Waffle at the Belgium Marketplace during the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival.
The first time we come across the Belgian Waffles recipe is in the 2010 cookbook, Celebrating 15 years of Delicious Discoveries. As the name implies, 2010 marked the 15th anniversary of the festival and Belgium was one of the new marketplaces added that year.
The recipe must have been popular as it was featured again in the 2011 version of the cookbook under their Guest Favorites tab. After a couple years of the cookbooks focusing on the Festival special events, such as Party for the Senses, the recipe surfaced again in A Taste of Epcot (believed to be 2014) as well as the 20th anniversary Epcot International Food and Wine Festival cookbook in 2015. The Best of Epcot’s Festivals cookbook from 2016 featured the recipe and then it was not seen again until the Official Disney Parks Celebration Cookbook in 2024.
While the initial recipe is featured in a book 15 years ago, all six instances of the recipe are the exact same, with only minor tweaks in wording (1 stick butter vs ½ cup unsalted butter, for example). The drink pairing recommendations vary widely with each book. Three of the books recommend a sweet Valckenberg Dornfelder wine from Germany, two books recommend a basic Moscato d’Asti from Italy and A Taste of Epcot recommends a Stella Artois lager!
This brings up the most interesting piece of the recipe: two tablespoons of beer. None of the recipes give any recommendations as to the type of beer or even bring attention in the descriptions that beer is added to the recipe. In my research, beer is added to Belgian waffles to aid in the texture and the carbonation helps with leavening. But wouldn't it bring a unique flavor to the waffle depending on the type of beer used? Investigations must be made!
For this National Waffle Day, I made three different waffles; the original berry compote waffle, the chocolate waffle and the all new cookie butter waffle debuting this year at the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival. I will use the same recipe with 3 different beers; a Belgian white (Blue Moon) for the berry compote waffle, a stout (Guinness) for the chocolate waffle and a Marzen amber lager (Sam Adams Octoberfest) for the cookie butter.
Besides the beer in the recipe, another odd ingredient was vanilla extract. Not odd in itself, but the amount was odd; an entire tablespoon. You usually see vanilla in teaspoon amounts. Is this possibly to help mask the flavors of the beer?
While making the berry compote, it asked for cornstarch to be mixed with red wine to thicken the sauce. A lot of alcohol in a breakfast dish, huh? It once again did not specify the type of wine, so I used port. Why?
It's a dessert style wine that I thought would work well with the berries
It was open
Sometimes as an amateur home chef, you just have to go with what you have on hand. Orange juice is what I chose as the main juice base, with other suggestions being apple or cranberry. I think the orange juice worked well, but I do wonder if cranberry would have been better to go with the other berry flavors. Apple usually fades into the background and adds sweetness.
Following the recipe, I made the batter in the evening, left it in the fridge overnight and woke up early the next morning to cook. Even sitting in the fridge, the yeast did its magic and the batter had risen to a pillowy texture. After warming up the waffle iron (which was a standard 7-8 inch round one, I do not own the 4 inch round like they serve in Epcot, but shape should not affect flavors), I made samples of each batter and tested the final product.
In looks, there was no difference in color from the varying beers. No distinct smell either, the yeast and slightly the vanilla mask the smell. There was a slight difference in flavor, which I was excited to find!
The Blue Moon was the most plain version, not offering much of any additional flavors to the batter. When paired with the berry compote, the strong flavors of the berries completely take over anything offered by the waffle, which just acts as a varying texture for the berries.
The Guinness batter had the most beer-like flavor, mostly on the back end, adding a bit of depth to the basic flavor of the batter. It went well with the chocolate, but when I tried other varieties with the chocolate, they did as well, so I wouldn’t say this was unique to the stout. Chocolate is such a strong flavor on its own that it once again takes over the dish.
My personal favorite was the Octoberfest batter. It had an almost caramel flavor at the end that just worked with the sugar and vanilla in the waffle. It was very light once again (those not looking for it may not even notice it) but I enjoyed it the most. Pairing it with the cookie butter elevated the caramel flavor even more, but once again that could be the topping flavor taking over.
The batters all came out delicious and created airy, fluffy waffles that would make the average waffle connoisseur very happy. The toppings chosen for the waffles are strong enough flavors on their own that the beer used in the batter really does not seem to make much of a difference. If you are eating them without their specific toppings, you will get some of that beer flavor, so I would recommend using a beer you enjoy or a light flavored beer that will be masked by the yeast and other batter ingredients. The distinct flavor of the stout was favored by my husband while I enjoyed the deep caramel flavor of the Marzen amber.
The cookie butter topping was the topping of choice by both of us, which has us looking forward to trying Disney’s iteration of this at the 2026 Epcot International Food and Wine Festival this year, running from August 27th through November 21st.
We plan on visiting and comparing recipes throughout the length of the festival, so check our socials and come back for more Disney Cookbook exploration!