A few weeks ago I decided that we needed our own pizzelle iron. Pizzelles are an Italian cookie flavored with anise. They are a Christmas tradition in our family and it hardly feels like Christmas without. We needed a specific type of iron. It had to be a Vitatonio No.3 hand iron. No electric irons for us. They just don’t count. And it had to be Vitantonio because the irons have a specific pattern that had to be matched. Also, the No.3 makes three diamond shaped cookies rather than the one circular one that most irons make. So where do you go to find a fifty-plus year old cooking gadget from a company that no longer exists? Ebay of course.
I found an iron almost exactly like Nani’s. The pattern matched and the size and kind of cookie that it made was just right. But the handles were different. I bid on the iron anyway figuring it was lucky that I found this one at all. And I didn’t have a whole lot of time to waste since I needed it in time for Christmas. When I logged on the next day to check my bid I found another iron exactly like the one my mom has now (originally Nani’s). So now I’m in the position of hoping that I get outbid on the first iron that I’m winning so I can get the one I really want. No luck, I won the first iron. Close, but not exactly what I wanted. So I bid the minimum amount on the other one (the Nani’s clone) and won that one as well. Do we need two nearly identical pizzelle irons? No, but now we have them.
A couple of weeks later and yesterday we finally got ready to make some cookies. We let Wesley help. He loves to cook and if he is awake you don’t really have any choice but to let him help. We only made half a recipe so he only cracked 6 eggs. I mean cracked them. Smashed them to bits. One at a time into a small bowl followed by me pulling out each and every egg shell fragment (hopefully each and every). He helped add the flower and other ingredients. He even helped run the hand mixer and it all went pretty smoothly, though he did try to stick his finger into the moving beaters (don’t worry he didn’t get it in there I was paying attention). For obvious reasons we decided not to let Wesley help with the extremely hot iron portion of the cooking. He took a nap and Amber and I got to work.
I had cleaned both irons before we used them with water and a produce brush. It had to be done. I didn’t know where they were from or what was on them. The problem was that I may have killed whatever non-stick coating had been created on them. The first cookies from both irons stuck terribly and were basically trash. We had to soak, scrape and scratch all the burned, stuck-on cookie bits from the irons. We let them cool and later that night we seasoned them just as we would a cast iron pan. The irons were heated on the stovetop over medium-high heat. When they were hot enough to sizzle water drops we brushed vegetable oil onto them using paper towels. We let them cool, wiped up the excess oil and repeated the process two more times. Success! The irons have started to take on a bit of slickness and the cookies didn’t stick. Another 50 years or so of cooking baking and I”ll have as good a coating as my mom.
Today Wesley helped shape the cookies. Normally the dough is rolled into small balls or sort of loaf-shaped lumps each made from a tablespoon or so of dough. Wesley’s strayed a bit from tradition. They were definitely more snake shaped and were less uniform than Nani would have allowed. He had a good time making his “snakes” and then watching me place them in the iron (on the back burner on the opposite edge of the stove from Wesley). All told we cooked up maybe 18 snakes into delicious cookies. I wasn’t sure how Wesley would take to the cookies, but he loved them. Only a bath could pull him away from the making and eating of these treats.
After only a few cookies the house is filled with the most wonderful aroma. The distinct smell of anise and butter filled our house and made it instantly feel like Christmas. I’m so glad that we can pass on this family tradition to yet another generation. I wonder if Nani had any idea how important these little cookies would be. Wesley has now added “pizzelle” to his vocabulary. And he always says it with a smile.
Nani would be so proud! She loved the photos of you at 2 making dough blobs to cook on her iron. She kept them on her living room shelf ans showed them to everybody for years. You were head to toe flour and grining from ear to ear. I am sooooo glad that you have chosen to carry on this tradition. I only wish I could have been there.