Italian Pizzelles

I married an Italian. This is my first attempt at Italian pastries and I am a huge fan! My Father in Law asked me to pick up Pizzelle's from our local Italian Market, Claro's. One tub of about 8 cookies costs $6.99. Yesterday when I went to get him some, they were sold out. They won't have more for 4 days. With my passion for baking, I figured why not buy a Pizzelle Baker and whip them up myself. You can buy the CucinaPro from Claro's or Amazon sells it. You can find some for sale and get free shipping for about $40.00. WalMart also sells them for $50.
I decided to go with the Basic Pizzelles Recipe from the cookbook that comes inside the CucinaPro box.
This recipe made nearly 30 pizzelles.

Ingredients:

3 large eggs
3/4 Cup sugar
2 Teaspoon vanilla extract
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, melted and cooled
1/2 Teaspoon anise seed (optional) - You can buy this at Claro's. I added it to ours. Gives it a light black licorice taste
1 3/4 Cups all-purpose flour
2 Teaspoons baking powder
2 Teaspoons Hershey's Cocoa (optional) - I added this to the last cup of batter and it made about 10 chocolate pizzelles

Directions:

Heat pizzelle iron. Just plug it in.

Melt butter and set aside.

Beat eggs and sugar until light golden yellow (2-3 minutes).

Add melted butter, vanilla, and anise, beat until blended.

Sift together the flour and baking powder. If you don't have a sifter, just beat until blended.

Place 1 tablespoon of batter on grid just in front of or close to the middle of the center of each pattern.

Close lid and latch and time for 30-45 seconds. We like ours a little more crispy, so I did some at 45 seconds and some at 55 seconds.

Use tongs to transfer the pizzelles to a rack where they can cool.

I had about 1 cup of batter towards the end and decided to add a couple teaspoons of cocoa to see what the chocolate ones would taste like. They are delicious.

If you want to get more creative, you can also add a teaspoon of Rum or Amaretto.

What's great about the iron, is you can chip off the edges to form perfectly round cookies or leave the edges on so your friends and family have a little more to munch on.

Amo il pizzelles!!!

http://www.cucinapro.com/