Have you ever had a Pizzelle?
I hadn’t until my friend Justine recently got married. Her grandmother had made all these homemade Italian cookies called Pizzelle for her wedding, and some of them she made into homemade cannolis. I was hooked at first bite! Delicate and Delicious is about the best way to describe them.
To make the Pizzelle you need a Pizzelle maker though, it is going to make life much easier. I have heard of people making them like pancakes, but you won’t get the pretty designs and it will take you much longer. So, I went in search of a Pizzelle Iron. After reading up on them, the different types available and reading the reviews of the different makers that are on the market I knew I wanted a Chef’sChoice PizzellePro.
Chef’s Choice received rave reviews, and now, I have to add mine to them. Love it. And as I go, I am finding even more things I can use it for, you will have to wait for another post to find those out though.
I decided to make chocolate pizzelle. There are MANY different recipes out there for pizzelle. Most make a TON. I knew that I didn’t want to make over 100 cookies, and I knew I wanted chocolate but at the end I will tell you how to make some vanilla ones as well.
You are going to need:
3 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
Beat the eggs and sugar together for about 3 minutes until fluffy and light yellow in color. Slowly drizzle in the butter. Using a spatula fold in the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder until well mixed.
It took me a few tries to get the right amount of batter. As you can see in the picture the one on the left is a little whop-sided, and needed more batter, the one on the right is almost there. It ends up being about a Tablespoon of batter to get the right coverage to make a full pizzelle. Once you put the batter on the pizzelle iron and close the lid it only takes about 30 seconds and they are done!! Don’t walk away.
If you want to make cannoli, you will need to wrap the hot pizzelle around the roller that comes with the maker. It only comes with one so you need to be pretty quick or find something in the kitchen that will work along with the roller that comes with it. I am using the handle of a spoon.
Aren’t they pretty!! The cookies are great on their own, but seriously, how can you make these and not make some into cannoli?
For the filling you will need:
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 stick of butter, softened
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Cream together the cream cheese and butter until creamy. Mix in the vanilla, then gradually stir in the confectioners’ sugar.
Once you have the filling mixed well you can either put it in the cannoli shells using a baggie with a hole cut in a corner or use a frosting tool thingy-ma-bob. I found mine at Target on clearance.
And as you can see…it works GREAT!
I will warn you, these are addictive.
Once you get them all made you will need to refrigerate them, unless you eat them all, like we are prone to do.
NOTE: If you want to make vanilla ones, all you have to do is leave out the cocoa powder and replace it with one teaspoon of vanilla. You could also experiment with other flavors, like lemon…that is my next one to try.
“Thanks to Chef’s Choice for providing the PizzellePro to help facilitate this post!!”
