Fried Rosettes: or, Adventures in deep-fried collectibles

Sometimes it seems like I'm not unloading junk so much as trading it for junk I actually want.

Rosettes or Timbales 1 cup flour ½ cup whole or evaporated milk ½ cup water 1 teaspoon sugar ¼ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon vanilla 2 eggs Put all ingredients into a mixing bowl and stir gently with a spoon until batter is smooth and as firm as thick cream. If you have to get out a whisk and beat vigorously before the flour lumps go away, let it stand for an hour before frying. If you used a plastic bowl, transfer the batter to something heat-resistant so you don't accidentally touch the bowl with the hot iron and melt it. You may prefer to pour the batter into a shallow baking pan rather than a bowl- it might make dipping easier. Heat oil to 325°-350°F, or about 160°-190°C. If you don't have a frying thermometer, dip a knife in the oil long enough to heat it. Quickly wipe it dry, then dip the tip into the batter and fry it. The batter should become golden in about 40 seconds. Dip the rosette or timbale iron in the oil long enough to heat it up. Wipe the oil off the bottom of it (just the bottom, not the sides) and dip it in the batter. Be sure the batter doesn't go over the top of the iron. Fry until golden, which should take about 40 seconds. When you lift the rosette out of the frying pan, tip it upside-down to pour out the oil that got in it. Then gently loosen it from the iron onto a plate with paper towels on top. I'm not good enough at making these to give precise directions, but here are the hints from the instruction sheet: Your oil is too hot if: Your drop from the iron before being removed from the oil. Your batter falls in a partially-cooked noodly mess, right back into the dipping-bowl as soon as you lift the iron out. Your rosette comes off the iron in the oil.  The rosettes are too soft when cooked. If the rosettes have blisters, your eggs or batter were overbeaten. Let it stand for an hour. If patty shells are not crisp, the batter is too thick. Dilute it with more milk. The bottom of patty shells can be made fried more crisp by putting them back into the oil and letting them free-float for a bit. If your rosettes start coming out soggy, your oil has cooled too much. (Every fresh rosette sucks some heat out of it, and not all stove burners can keep up.) Just let the oil rest and reheat for a minute or two. US Utilities wafflet iron instruction sheet, 1933

Several years ago, we had to empty out a late relative's apartment in Chicago. (I think I've said this before, but this was how I found out that I had relatives in Chicago.) We have only just now gotten around to going through many of the boxes that we threw in the back of a U-Haul and then stuffed into various closets back home. A lot of things are only interesting because no one threw them out ninety years ago, like handwritten electric bills or toothbrushes from the Jazz Age. But every time we consider just flinging it all in the trash, we find things like my great-grandmother's recipe binder or some amusingly gossipy letters. (Her husband was a mortician. She had occasional opinions on how various decedents were dressed and how their houses looked for the wake.)

Anyway, Mom tacitly encouraged me to help her regain some space in the house by taking anything I either liked or thought might be worth selling. This included a lot of swag from the 1933/1934 Chicago World's Fair. Either they went to the fair repeatedly (it was in their town, after all), or they visited for one tightly-packed day and grabbed absolutely every free flyer they could carry. I don't think that random mass-produced flyers count as "irreplaceable family treasures," so online they went (and didn't sell for very much).

Selling world's fair souvenirs involved looking through a lot of already-sold listings for price comparisons, which in turn made Ebay's algorithm think I was absolutely obsessed with the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. Even had I wanted to buy historical clutter, most of the collectibles were too collectibly priced. But it turns out that even the most devout world's fair collectors aren't very interested in old kitchen things. I got these for cheaper than buying on Wish and without the risk of lead poisoning. (Yes, Ebay's algorithm finally got me again.) I thought it'd be fun to try making them.

More of these await in the box.

 Like pizzelles, I had never been particularly interested in making timbales until I decided to buy the implements. But fortunately, this has no underlying post-breakup motivation. I just thought they'd be fun.

You can tell the Depression was on when these were made. They printed DELICIOUS --- INEXPENSIVE --- EASY TO MAKE (emphasis mine) right on the box.

Also, I love how they ended the address with "Chicago, U.S.A." like you're mailing international packages. They really wanted people to buy these and take them home around the world. I wonder if any of these would turn up if you peeped through kitchen cabinets on other continents?

These may look cute and dainty in pictures with no scale reference, but they were surprisingly big. Like, a single one nearly covered the plate. 

Of course, plates don't come in standard sizes. So here it is on a 3x5-inch index card.  

I put our new toys on the kitchen scale. We have a pound of metal.

Because my scale is bilingual, here it is in grams. I want everyone to appreciate the heft, whether you use customary or metric.

Some of the irons were, um, seasoned with cooked-on grease. I found this reassuring. If someone got these to work at some point, in theory I didn't buy commemorative duds.

These particular irons have an exciting feature: you can screw this little flat plate onto the bottom and make little tartlet-shell things instead of flowers or snowflakes. I've seen irons that make those cute little fried wagon-wheels and irons that make tartlet shells, but I've never seen ones that can do both. I wonder if they never worked as well as advertised, and therefore no one bought them?

And if you take the little plate off, it looks like a souvenir medallion.

The other one might look like a random cloud design, but it's actually a take on the logo from the world's fair where it was sold (ie, that planet-looking thing on the box). It even says 1933 if you flip it over. I find that absolutely delightful.

I've never fried rosettes before, but I didn't want to look up instructions online. I'm not as good as I'd like at spotting AI slop. Until the AI bubble pops, it is not safe to mix boiling-hot fat and inhuman garbage. Fortunately, someone selling another set of these irons uploaded pictures of the instruction sheet.

 

After skipping over the more brand-specific directions, cutting out the product placements, and undoing some of the more peculiar ad-agency capitalization, let's see what they have to say:

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

Heat mold in your favorite fat at a temperature from 325 to 375 degrees. (ed. note: about 160° - 190°C.)

("Your favorite fat"! I love it.)

If no thermometer is used, dip point of knife in batter, then hold it in hot fat. It should brown in about 40 seconds. Never let fat smoke.

I tried this, and you should know two things: First, heat the bare knife in the fat before dipping. Second, wipe it dry and quickly dip it in batter before it cools off. If you don't wipe off the hot oil, the batter will just slide right off.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the damn batter did not come off the knife after frying. I had to soak each test-knife (I did this multiple times over the course of frying) overnight.

When molds are hot, remove and lightly wipe bottom on cloth. Dip hot mold into batter but never let batter go over top of mold. Then place back into hot cooking fat and fry until a delicate brown— about 25 to 35 seconds. Wafflets must be fully covered with cooking fat while being cooked.

When patty shell plate is not in use, always keep the small screw in the hole in the bottom of the mold.

Well, keeping the screw in place makes sense. First, you don't have to remember where you mislaid the darn thing. Second, you won't get batter stuck in the screw-hole.

TO MAKE PATTY SHELLS

First screw patty shell plate on THIN side of mold by using point of knife or coin.

First, I am NOT jabbing the end of my good kitchen knife into a flathead screw. Second, did people not have screwdrivers at home in those days? Even my friends who can't use tools have a cheap one lying around from the last time something broke.

Heat up mold and dip into batter about ¾ its depth. Then lower mold gently into hot cooking fat, keeping mold level so patty shell will swell evenly all around as it rises to top of mold. Let mold rest on bottom of pan to cook.

(Never heard of keeping things at the bottom of the pot while you're frying before. I'd have thought they would burn.)

To make "cream puff" cover for patty shell, remove the plate and make a very shallow rosette.

That actually sounds so cute! I wanted to try it as soon as I read it.

All right, now we're getting to the handy hints section:

POINTS TO REMEMBER

If wafflets drop from mold before being removed from utensil, your lard is too hot. If they are too soft when cooked they have been cooked too quickly. If they show blisters your eggs or batter have been beaten too much. If patty shells are not crisp the batter is too thick and must be diluted with milk. The bottom of patty shells can be made fried more crisp by putting them back into hot lard and cooking more while they float on top.

Rosettes or patty shells can reheated by placing in a warm oven.

Fancy colors are obtained by mixing pure vegetable colors into the batter. Rainbow colors are obtained by mixing various colors into different parts of the batter before putting the molds in.

All of that seemed good to know.

If we zoom in on the instruction sheet I didn't buy, we have a recipe. Some of the words are cut off in the picture (understandable since they were trying to sell merchandise rather than document random instruction sheets for posterity), but we can infer the missing words.

If this is the recipe they use for demonstrations, hopefully it's good enough to sell me on not trying to return these.

Well I feel like I am ready to fry some rosettes, don't you? 

The directions tell us to pile all our ingredients into a bowl and "stir gently" with a spoon. (Apparently if you overbeat the batter, these don't fry right.) However, my gentle spoon-nudging only yielded a lumpy mess.

I had to get out a whisk and defy the warnings about blisters on my patty shells. After beating this hard enough that Fanny Cradock would have approved, our batter resembled "thick cream" as specified. It was also thoroughly impregnated with little bubbles, which presumably is why our instruction sheet threatened blisters. Fortunately, the directions have a remedy:  let the batter stand for an hour should an unfortunate whipping occur. Patience would ward off ruination.

While our batter recovered from a severe overbeating, I got everything else ready. After screwing the rosette iron onto the handle, I thought to myself that it looked hopelessly cute. If you were in charge of coming up with props for a kiddie play, some spray paint and glitter would turn this into a really good fairy wand. (Though if children are the same as I remember from that age, you'd have to prevent whoever was playing the good fairy from bashing people with the wand as soon as they felt the weight.)

After getting our batter whipped and letting it recover, it was time to fry. As a safety note, choose a pot that gives your oil plenty of room to boil up. Don't settle for something that is technically deep enough to immerse your rosettes and patty shells. I ended up switching to a saucepan after this proved inadequate.

Just because you have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen doesn't mean you should use it.

I wanted to make the little "patty shells" as the direction sheet calls them. Dipping and frying seemed like a wonderfully fast way to crank out lots of tartlet shells without any pastry fuss. However, our first attempt looked sad and bulbous.

The leaflet says this will "add dignity and pleasure to your parties."

I think I know why no one makes interchangeable rosette/pastry case irons. We had some batter leak past the removable plate, firmly anchoring our patty shell. We couldn't get it off without ripping it. (I would later carefully bend the screw-on plate back into flatness, but that would wait until everything was cooled off and dried.)

I decided that my pastry case (or "patty shell" in company parlance) dreams would have to wait until further practice. Until then, I would try out every single one of the irons in our one-pound bag of goodies, starting with our special 1933 commemorative iron. This one was my favorite because it couldn't have come from anywhere but the world's fair. So it presumably was only available for a few short months of a single year, in one demonstration booth in a single city. (Well, I say that. There's a good chance they sold the surplus in the local office or gave them away as curiosities to customers and employees until they were finally gone.)

My first attempt at making special 1933 crispy things failed before we even made it to the oil. The batter flash-cooked on the iron and fell back into the bowl in hot, slimy noodles.

I referred back to the instruction sheet, which says "If wafflets drop from mold before being removed from utensil, your lard is too hot." So I turned off the burner, let the oil cool a little, and used the intermission to wipe the splats from the countertop.

Our next attempt at making a crispy fried 1933 went better until I tried to get it off the iron. But at least my lard wasn't too hot anymore.

After some more attempts, we actually got one to stay intact! See, it's an art-deco cloud swirl that says 1933, the year of the world's fair. It is also full of oil since I didn't know you're supposed to tip the iron upside down before getting your cooked creation off of it.

I wondered if they designed a 1934 iron when the fair was extended into the next year.

Dizzy with success and airborne grease, I decided next to try the little iron that makes two at once. If it worked, I thought I'd use it for making things like mini quiches and other things that you hand around on occasions when a fork is too inconvenient. The batter half-slipped off, which simultaneously gave me the sting of failure and the happy chance to read A CENTURY OF PROGRESS- U.S. UTILITIES on my limited-edition kitchen clutter. (Future patty-shell attempts would be more successful.)

At this point, I began to reconsider whether this as an economical way to make treats in the summertime. The box says they're inexpensive, and I had thought that perhaps frying would be cheaper than running the oven. But between sopping up the ongoing mess and wiping the irons before every dip, I think the massive outlay of paper towels offset any energy savings.

With that said, I decided next to try these very small irons. I don't know if they're part of this set or if they just got dumped into the same bag when someone's kitchen was being emptied out.

The starburst/flower one came out really cute, but I think the other two were amorphous fried blobs. If you didn't know these are supposed to be a fish and a butterfly, could you tell?

At this point, I decided that I had gotten marginally better at making these (though not good enough to promise anyone a tray of them), and dared to revisit our first iron. Our next stars came out so pretty I could imagine buying them off a cart in the park. As a side note, I love how you can see the flathead screw in the center.

Despite the massive pileup of failures in the trash can, the successful ones were really good. They were incredibly light and delicate, like fragile floating bits of crispiness. After tasting one, I was ready to brave the mess again (but not tonight!).

Naturally, I had to take one of our more successful mini-shells and fill it with something, just to see if I could. With that in mind, I had made a half-recipe of applesauce-date mallow. It involves nearly no heat (aside from microwaving the applesauce for a bit), which is perfect when we're trying to keep things easy for both the air conditioning and the electric bill. Also, I was right when I speculated that it is a lot better when lightly spiked. Unfortunately, it is the same color as our patty shell.

Just to complete things, I put the matching lid on top.

These make wonderfully crisp shells. It was almost like very thin layers of puff pastry, except fried. I don't know how long you can leave these pre-filled before they get soggy, but it was fantastic. It's like picking the breading off of fried foods, except in really cute shapes.

I'm not going to close with detailed instructions on how to use rosette irons because I wouldn't know. But I will list my first-time mistakes so that you can avoid them:

• Put your batter in a shallow bowl (or a baking pan, I saw some people do that in videos) before you try to dip the iron. It's a bit awkward trying to get in a deep bowl with a piece of metal on a stick.
• Don't use a plastic bowl. Otherwise, your hot iron might melt a hole in it when you dip.
• Have a metal slotted spoon ready in case they fall off the iron and back into the oil. (Obviously, a plastic spoon will melt!)
• Line your work surface for easier cleanup. There will be a big mess. In the old days I would have suggested a thick layer of newspapers. These days I might suggest the brown paper they use to pad out boxes for shipping. Whatever you use, it will be so much easier to just roll up your entire splattery mess and throw it out.