How Many Calories Are in a Stroopwafel?

The short answer: a packaged supermarket stroopwafel runs from about 120 to 170 calories, and where it lands inside that range is almost entirely a question of how much the waffle weighs.

The numbers, by size

Daelmans, the brand most people abroad have actually held in their hand, publishes figures for its different formats. They make a useful reference because the recipe barely changes between them:

• A 29 g waffle: around 120 calories
• A 36.5 g chocolate-coated waffle: around 150 calories
• A 39 g waffle: around 170 calories

For the 29 g one, that breaks down to roughly 4.5 g of fat, 19 g of carbohydrate, 11 g of sugar and 1 g of protein.

The rule that works for any waffle

Divide the calories by the grams in all three of those lines and you get almost exactly the same number: a stroopwafel carries around 4.1 calories per gram. That is the only figure worth remembering, because it lets you work out any waffle in front of you. Weigh it, multiply by four, and you are within a few calories of the truth.

It also explains why the numbers you find online disagree so violently. They are not measuring different recipes. They are measuring different sizes, and a market stroopwafel the width of your palm can easily be twice the weight of the one in a supermarket sleeve.

Why the density is what it is

A stroopwafel is two thin layers of dough pressed hot around a soft caramel filling. The dough is flour, butter, sugar and egg; the filling is syrup. There is no water left in it after pressing and almost no air, which is exactly what makes it chewy and exactly what makes it dense per gram. A biscuit of the same weight that snaps rather than bends usually has more air in it and lands lower.

Put next to other things you might eat with a coffee, one supermarket stroopwafel sits roughly where a couple of digestive biscuits or a small croissant sit. It is a treat, not a meal, and it was designed to be one: the original was made from bakery offcuts and sold cheap to the workers of Gouda.

A fresh one is a different question

We do not publish a calorie figure for ours, and it is worth explaining why rather than inventing one. We press them to order on the iron, by hand, so no two weigh exactly the same, and once a waffle goes under melted chocolate, biscuit crumb or a spoon of Biscoff, the topping matters more than the waffle underneath it. Quoting a single number for all of that would be tidier than it would be true.

What we can tell you precisely is what is in them. Every allergen across the whole menu is listed, flavour by flavour, on our allergens page, and if you need something more specific than that for a dietary reason, write to us and we will answer properly.

And if the reason you are counting is that you want the good version rather than the frequent one, that is the argument for a fresh one. See the flavours we press each day, or order a pack shipped across the Netherlands, Europe, the UK and the US.