Electric Pizzelles: or, Stepping away from the stovetop for the first time

I let modernity seduce me.

Pizzelles 1 cup margarine 1 cup sugar 4 eggs 2 cups flour 1 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. vanilla* Pinch of salt Beat margarine until soft. Gradually add sugar, then beat until light. Add eggs and vanilla, beat well. Sift in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Dough should be soft and sticky. Cook until golden on a hot pizzelle iron. Pizzelles will harden and become crisp as they cool. *If desired, you can substitute 1 teaspoon lemon extract or anise oil. Source:Black Angus pizzelle iron instructions

The recipe title says it's "Authentic Italian." I don't know if it came directly from Italy, nor do I care. If I was an authenticity snob about Italian food, I would have missed out on garlic bread.

Black Angus pizzelle iron instructions

My Italian friends (of which I have surprisingly many) have given me semi-slackjawed looks for making pizzelles on the stovetop. So, I decided to try the modern, electrical way. This turned up at a price so low that I barely felt it. Also, you can take the metal plates out for washing, which is a maddeningly rare feature in waffle irons. It's nice to know that if I have a horrible, burnt-on mess, I can soak the waffle grids overnight.

First, I had to ask "What is a company with a name like 'Black Angus' doing making Italian specialty items?" You'd think they'd make grilling accessories or meat smokers or something. I did some trawling online, and found various Black Angus-branded countertop cooking devices like toaster ovens, electric rotisseries, and waffle irons. But I couldn't find any information, not even a vintage ad. I then sent an email to the library in the town that Black Angus was apparently based in, asking for anything they could tell me. Three days later, one of the librarians sent me this note:

I received your inquiry about the Black Angus company and I have been looking into it, but I am sorry to say I have not found much. I have been able to determine that it was located at 41 Meadow Street and that it operated there from around 1970 until sometime between 1988 and 1996. I have been asking some of the folks who have lived in town awhile if they know anything, but they either don’t remember it or can only recall that it made countertop kitchen appliances.
I’m sorry I don’t have more to give you, but it seems the company did not leave much for us to reconstruct its history. If I come across anything more I will pass it along to you.

I was really appreciative that this person went out of their way to ask people on my behalf.

Setting aside historical inquiry, I was amused that our new impulse purchase proudly proclaims on its nameplate that it is a combination pizzelle iron and sandwich grill. I can't tell you how many times I've said "I really want a grilled cheese but all I have is this specialty waffle iron!"

From the look of this thing, at least one previous owner made a lot of pizzelles on it. This was part of why I decided to let myself risk purchasing it.

I had to make grilled cheese on it before committing any pizzelle batter. 

I can't ever get a grilled cheese to cook right on a frying pan. No matter how low I set the stove, the cheese never melts before the bread burns. I know that grilled cheese is so easy that kids can do it, but for some reason I cannot. And so, I flipped the metal plates over and found that apparently no one has ever toasted a sandwich in this thing.

I plugged the iron in, and the little status light soon glowed bright orange. I should note that they didn't tuck a little light bulb in there. It's just a clear piece of plastic, lit from behind by the heating elements. So if you like, you can say that it is a wildly inefficient 1100-watt night light that also makes pizzelles.

And so, it was time to modernize my sandwiches! 

Because I underestimated how hot this thing gets, I burned my first grilled cheese. I like knowing that I can fail at grilled cheese whether I use a griddle or an electric sandwich press. It's a sign that the universe isn't breaking its own laws.

The next time, I made sure to watch it more closely. Our resulting grilled cheese was perfectly golden, beautifully melted, and very flat.

Anyway, I didn't buy this for the production of grilled cheese. (However, if the grocery store ever puts corned beef on discount we will feast on Reubens.) I wanted to make pizzelles the modern, electrified way.

This didn't come with instructions, but I found the sheet online. I decided to make the recipe that originally came with this iron. After all, the people at Black Angus theoretically chose one that would show their products to their best advantage.

Like most cake recipes, Black Angus' pizzelles start off with creaming the butter and sugar. I even followed the direction to separately beat the margarine until smooth, so that if the recipe came out badly I could say I followed every step. (Also, it only took like twenty seconds with an electric mixer.)

This recipe went together as easily as any yellow cake. I ended up adding a lot more flour after it looked hopelessly runny, but I attribute that to the ongoing butter moisture crisis. After one taste of the finished batter, I knew that the immediate future would be delicious.

And so, with great happiness and a preheated iron, we prepared to make our first electric pizzelles! I didn't know if I needed to and preheat the iron for fifteen minutes to season it (like the instructions said), or if you only need to do that when the iron is brand new. Just to make very sure I was doing this right, I plugged it in and gave it a hot, well-greased quarter of an hour. When I opened the iron, it put out a huge puff of smoke. I had to hastily take down the kitchen's smoke detector.

As directed, I cooked these for three seconds only. I then opened the iron to find that the pizzelles were fully cooked and slightly golden, just as promised. They also looked quite bad.

I'm not saying these pizzelles were hopeless, but they definitely looked like it.

I managed to remove the pizzelles off intact and lay them flat before they cooled off. I thought that perhaps the next ones would come out more easily, but I had to gently pry out every pizzelle out of this iron. No matter how well I greased it, I always opened it to find something like this.

I really this iron to work because the design looked unexpectedly pretty when the waffles came out. But no matter how hard I squeezed the handles, the pizzelles just weren't thin enough to be nice and crisp. (Or are they supposed to look like this, and mine have been wrong all this time? I still don't know.) 

Anyway, if I managed to grip the handles tight enough to make these crispy on one side, the batter pushed up the iron on the back. At best, they were nearly burnt at one end and Eggos on the other.

And so, I unplugged the iron and cooked the rest of the pizzelles on the stove. They came out so delicate that light passed right through them. And when they cooled off, they tasted like I had put cake batter on a waffle iron. They were so good that I quickly mixed another batch of batter before the iron could cool off. 

I didn't want my new, non-returnable electric iron to be a waste of money and counterspace. After giving it some thought, I decided that various parts of the iron must have loosened over the years. And so, I got out a screwdriver and tightened every single wobbly bit I could find. The iron felt a lot better after making all of its parts snug again, but it didn't make a bit of difference. Eventually I realized: this really isn't made for pizzelles.

If we look at the other pizzelle irons, they all have really sturdy hinges.

However, this thing only has stamped sheet metal joining it at the back.

Moving to the front, the handles are also attached with sheet metal. When I squeezed them as firmly as I could, I could I could actually see bending as the hot pizzelle batter expanded. 

And so, I had to reluctantly admit that this brief foray into modernity gave me nothing but an interesting recipe.

But even though this can't live up to its own pizzelle hype, I don't think it was a complete waste of money. For one thing, it does a perfect job of toasting the heels from a loaf of bread. You know how whenever you put bread heels in a toaster, they always curl up and blacken at the edges? Well, take a look at this!

Golden. Perfect. I'm still deciding if it's worth every penny.

And so, instead of reluctantly using the bread heels for sandwiches, they can become really good avocado toast!

I never even thought of putting avocado on toast until that one rich guy claimed that $19 avocado toast was keeping me from buying a house. I read that and thought "What an economical snack! Avocados are less than a dollar each!"

And when I was in the mood for baked potatoes but didn't want to heat up the oven or wait half an hour, this iron made crisp golden spud slices in about three minutes. By the time I had the dishwasher loaded, the countertop wiped, and the tea poured, they were ready.

Granted, they were very unevenly cooked on top. I can't slice potatoes with robotic precision, so the thicker ones got toasted and the others stayed pale. But if you flipped them over, they were all perfect.

 I'm not saying I needed a sandwich press. But I'm not in a rush to get rid of it either.