Est! Est!! Est!!! Pizzelles

Somebody really liked this recipe.

Est! Est!! Est!!! Pizzelles 6 eggs 1 tsp vanilla 1 tbsp anise extract, or ¼ tsp anise oil 1 tsp orange or lemon extract 1 cup sugar 1 cup butter or oil Pinch of salt 2¼-2½ cups flour 2 tsp baking powder If using butter, melt it and set it aside to cool. Combine flour and baking powder in a sifter, set aside. Beat eggs and flavorings with an electric mixer until very light. Gradually add the sugar, beating the whole time. Beat until very thick. Gradually pour in the butter or oil, beating on high speed the whole time. Then set aside the mixer. Sift in the flour and stir it in by hand. Cook on a hot pizzelle iron until crisp and golden. If desired, take out about a third of the batter. Mix in ¼ cup cocoa powder. Cut this into the rest of the batter for a marbled effect. (Note: Apparently lots of people can make chocolate pizzelles, but the cocoa powder makes them stick horribly to the iron every time I try. So beware!) Source: handwritten recipe on a pizzelle iron box

I've been rehoming unwanted clutter on Ebay, which is kind of fun if you're not in it for the money. It's amusing to see how far across the country your junk--- I mean, your under-cherished treasures--- can go. Every now and then while I'm waiting for my listing photos to upload, I'll look at the suggested merchandise. Because I've already gotten everything I want, I am now immune to ill-advised purchases. (However, I am not above helping myself to interesting things I find on the curb.) This pizzelle iron turned up, and I knew I wouldn't buy it because I already have the same one perched on top of the refrigerator. (Again, I already have everything I want.)

Whoever first owned this iron wrote today's recipe on the box in big enough letters to cover the entire side of it. That is even more commitment than permanently writing a recipe into the blank pages at the end of a cookbook. Maybe they were like "This is the recipe. There are other pizzelle recipes, but I choose this one for now and for always." Naturally, I had make it.

As with so many pizzelles, this recipe starts off with beating the eggs until Miss Leslie would have approved. This is why I really love having a stand mixer in my life. I simply had to turn it on and leave it alone, which freed me to clear off counterspace to make room for the impending cooling racks. Within a minute or two, the egg (just the one, we're cutting down the recipe) looked like this.

This is only one egg.

This really is the kind of recipe that electric mixers were made for. Whipping everything into a beige custard would be an arduous ordeal if we were doing it by hand. Even a handcranked eggbeater would have left our hands a bit sore. But today, our pre-flour mixture formed peaks in less than five minutes. It also tasted insanely good, in large part because I added a truly excessive splash of almond extract.

Our recipe box (literally a recipe box!) tells us to add anise. I've learned that apparently anise is the traditional pizzelle flavoring, but it's not my favorite extract to add to the batter. So I left it out. (However, I love adding powdered star anise to chocolate fudge. As a bonus, everyone else thinks it tastes weird, so I get to eat all of it!)

After adding the flour, I could tell this was supposed to be on the cake-batter end of pizzelles instead of a firm dough. However, it was a little bit curdled. So I added a smidge more flour than the recipe called for. 

Now, if I wanted to make these exactly like the original writer did, I would have made these on the stovetop iron that is identical to the one this recipe came with. But I wanted to get out the electric one and justify having bothered some unsuspecting electricians to fix its wiring. The batter looked unexpectedly pretty when it landed.

The lid put up some resistance when I tried to open it. I was already bracing myself for failure, because that usually means the batter has stuck to both sides of the iron and glued it shut. But after a few moments of gentle prising, the iron opened without tearing the pizzelless. However, they were were firmly attached to the lid of the iron.

I still haven't gotten the hang of putting the right amount of batter onto my electric iron. They're either runty or they ooze.

To my own surprise, I managed to lift them off in a single sheet. I fully expected to destroy them in my attempts to dislodge them from the iron. On a barely-related note, I love imagining generations of people saying that those fluffy bits of hot dough between the pizzelles are for the person working the iron.

These tasted like they wanted to be crisper than they ended up. I know I didn't undercook them because they had turned a lovely golden color. But even after these cooled completely, they were almost soft. On the one hand, I like pizzelles to be really crispy. But on the other hand, these didn't break into messy shards when you bit into them. And of course, I don't know enough about pizzelles to get away with being opinionated about them. These seem like they'd be really good with some sort of custard or cream spread onto them, or maybe clapped together with a filling like stroopwafels. Which I just might do in the near-ish future.