By Lisa Yockelson
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, July 16, 2008

With its ingredients orchestrated in perfect harmony, a warm waffle lifted straight from the iron can be a fragrant cushion for summer fruit.

All the ripe stone fruit and berries that surface each week throughout this bright, hot season beg to keep company with something cakey and buttery. After all, how many fresh fruit salads and compotes can you eat without itching for something, well, substantial? Fruit alone can be tangled in a batter, gently enclosed in a dough and cascaded over pancakes or the waffles' golden, gridlike nooks.

With such riches at the market, this is no time to scrimp.

My waffle batter is sweetened just enough to enhance its mingling of butter, citrus, vanilla, whole eggs and egg yolks; the treatment highlights the taste of that butter, which, in turn, helps convey the elements of orange and lemon extracts and the zest of those two fruits.

The batter uses a softer, low-protein cake flour, which brings tenderness and reasonably delicate textural structure to the finished waffles. Elevated by baking powder and whipped egg whites, it creates a lightly crisp surface and cozy insides. (A bonus: I developed the recipe so that the uncooked batter remains fairly soft until all the waffles are griddled.)

The waffles are a perfect match for a fruit topping that I call "waffle fruit" and that can be made one of two ways: If golden-fleshed, sliced peaches or nectarines are at hand, add a little water or apple juice and fresh lemon juice to heated apricot preserves and spoon the mixture through. If red raspberries, blackberries, figs, plums, pluots, cherries or blueberries are bright and fresh, use red currant jelly instead of the preserves. Both collections of fruit bring out all the sweet-tart tones present in the fruit itself.

If waffles with a pour of maple syrup have been your only option, the accompanying recipe might add just the right summery boost to your table.

Lisa Yockelson is the author of "ChocolateChocolate" (Wiley, 2005).