Pizzelles…Quick, Easy, Fun!

Growing up, pizzelles were always part of the seemingly endless variety of Christmas cookies that were baked at our house.

We had a cast iron hand-iron that Mom or Dad would hold over stove burner. It had a well-seasoned patina that was a tribute to its many years of service. Of course, my sisters and I made sure all the broken or terribly malformed cookies were disposed of properly. As we got older, we were allowed to place a dollop of dough on the hot iron or be in charge of the iron itself. These days, Mom has an electric, as do I. I think my Villaware pizzelle baker falls into the category of “perfect kitchen tools”: it’s small and easy to store when not in use, it’s easy to clean, and it’s idiot-proof to use. If you can plug it in and follow the second hand on your watch, you can make some darn good tasting cookies in no time.

Matt and I had some time to ourselves last night, so I pulled out the pizzelle maker and mixed up some dough while he finished his homework. The great thing about these cookies is that you can easily alter the recipe to your particular tastes giving you a wide variety of flavors, colors, and textures from which to choose.

The standard recipe is

Eat them as cookies or shape them into homemade ice cream cones

Beat the eggs and sugar, then add cooled melted butter, vanilla, and anise. Sift flour and baking powder and add to egg mixture. The batter will be stiff enough to be dropped by a spoon. Before mixing, I turned on the iron to let it heat up. Before making the first cookies, spray a little cooking spray on each side and you’re ready to go.  Drop a teaspoon sized dollop on each side. The cookies only take about 30-45 seconds to cook. Use a spatula to remove them from the iron. Before you know it, you’ll have 2 1/2 dozen light, crisp cookies. Serve them plain or dust with a little powdered sugar. While they’re still hot, you can also shape them into homemade ice cream cones.

Matt doesn’t like anise (it reminds him of some cough medicine he had to take once), so I omitted that from the recipe and substituted orange juice instead. Other variations include adding rum and orange peel, adding cocoa, and adding Amaretto or almond instead of anise. You can also divide the dough and add a little food coloring to one half. Then drop a half teaspoon sized dollop of each dough and you end up with swirls! Quick, easy, and fun!

Tagged as: Amaretto, anise, Baking and Confections, Baking powder, Butter, Christmas cookies, eggs, pizzelles, Powdered sugar, Vanilla extract, Villaware