Pizzelles

When we were young, Grandma and Grandpa often hosted Memorial Day and Labor Day get togethers. They often invited their friends, Rose and Red. To the left is a photo from Grandma and Grandpa's house in Chicago, featuring (from left to right) Grandpa, Rose, Grandma, Noah, Mom and Megan. Below is a photo from the house on Addison in Riverside, featuring Mom, Mike, Red, Rose and Grandma. Usually, Rose would bring her homemade pizzelles, a delicious Italian waffle cookie. Rose often made anise-flavored pizzelles, a traditional Italian flavor.

Pizzelle means little pizza and the name comes from the round shape. When fresh off the iron, pizzelles are soft and pliable and can be shaped into ice cream cones, mini-bowls or cannoli shells. After a few minutes, the cookie hardens and becomes firm and crispy.

In order to make pizzelles, you need to have a pizzelle iron or press. The modern electric pizzelle irons look a lot like waffle irons, but result in thin cookies. The old pizzelle irons were designed to be used over an open fire or on the stove top. Most pizzelle irons have a waffle pattern on one side and flower pattern on the other side.

Once you made the base batter, any flavoring can be added. Flavoring includes vanilla, almond extract, anise, lemon and orange. For chocolate flavor, add three tablespoons of cocoa powder. For coffee flavor, dissolve a tablespoon or two of instant coffee with the melted butter. When making almond pizzelles, I like to use both almond extract and chopped almonds in the batter. For the recent Fourth of July family party, I even made chocolate almond pizzelles, which were quite tasty. I have not made pistacchio pizzelles, but I may try those next time. At the end of this post, there is a photo of Tim enjoying a pizzelle from my latest batch at Mom's new place in North Riverside.

Pizzelles

• 3 eggs, room temperature
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
• 2 tsp. vanilla (or other extract)
• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• optional: crushed nuts, cocoa powder, etc.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs and sugar. Add the cooled butter and desired flavorings. Sift in the flour and baking powder into the egg mixture. The batter should be stiff enough to drop by spoon. 

Heat up the electric pizzelle iron. Drop a teaspoon of batter onto each grid pattern and close the pizzelle iron. The pizzelles will be ready in about one minute. Remove the pizzelle with tongs and allow to cool on a flat surface for flat pizzelles or immediately shape. Dust with powdered sugar. Enjoy!