6 eggs 3 1/2 cups flour 1 1/3 cups sugar 1 cups vegetable oil 1 tablespoon vanilla extract4 teaspoons baking powder Zest of half a lemon and half an orange
Materials
Pizzelle Iron Sift Spatula
*Reccomended to have a bowl of ice water on standby
1.In a bowl, combine baking powder and flour and then sift the mixture to remove any clumps.
2. Do the same with the sugar, separately.
3. In a large bowl beat the eggs and gradually add sugar while continuing to mix, until combined and smooth.
4. Add the vegetable oil to the sugar-egg mixture along with the vanilla extract.
5. Gradually add the sifted flour to the bowl while mixing and combine it all until the batter is smooth. The dough will be ready when it is no longer sticking to the sides of the bowl.
6. Heat up the pizzelle iron and spoon 1 teaspoon of batter onto each form. Close the lid and hold for approximately 25-30 seconds.
7. Use a flat knife or spatula to remove the pizzelle from the iron and place them on a drying rack to cool.
8. Close the iron lid periodically (every 2-3 batches of cookies) to heat up again before continuing. The pizzelle will cool completely within a few minutes.
Coming from a large, and for the most part, disorganized Italian family, means it takes a lot of missed texts for all of us to get together. But one thing always brings us together: food.
Across the dining table, clad with a vintage fruit-pattern tablecloth is an assortment of food to snack on: petticelli di zuchine, cudduri, amaretti.
However, the treat that stands above all are the pizzelle, a thin waffle cookie adorned with intricate, snowflake-like patterns.
Growing up, I loved making pizzelle. The whole family would gather at my Nanna’s house to do this together. As ‘Afari Tuoi’, an Italian game show played on the TV, I was busy running around the house with my cousins, playing games and bothering the adults.
One time, as the smell of the soon-to-be cookies wafted through the home, I guess I got a little too excited and my waving hand collided with the searing pizzelle iron, resulting in… disaster. A scalding burn spread across my right hand, and being four years old facing a suddenly extreme pain, I burst into tears. My mom hurried to my side with a bowl of ice-cold water. She had me hold my hand under the water for so long, the pain of the glacial water rivaled that of the burn. I’m not entirely sure this cold water ritual works though, as I still bear the scar from that fateful day.
Pizzelle are often made at Christmas time, and one recent night, I made the pilgrimage to my Nanna’s. My Nanna made the dough, not paying so much of a glance at a recipe as usual. Then, we began rolling the dough into balls, and putting them into the electric pizzelle maker, squashing the balls down to form the thin cookies and filling the kitchen with the aromas of warm vanilla and citrus. As I listened to my Nanna reminisce about her childhood, she explained to me a time when she, herself, was scalded whilst holding the pizzelle iron over the hot coals. The original cookie maker was made of iron with a long wooden handle that my Nanna said she and her siblings would hold over a fire of hot coals in order to bake them.
Just like me, she still has a scar on her right hand to show for it. Turns out, pizzelle making is a family tradition in more ways than one!