The Posse To The Rescue!

    As chronicled in my October 27 post, I volunteered to provide the cookies for the upcoming - tomorrow, actually - wedding of the daughter of one of my good neighbors.
    As also chronicled, I had a major cookie fail - I managed to botch about 15 dozen of the 55 dozen I'd planned on making.

    One of my Panera Posse members, upon hearing my tale of woe, was less concerned that I'd decimated the cookie count than that my wedding cookie selection didn't include any pizzelles.
    Now, pizzelles, for the uninitiated, are those Italian waffle cookies that look like this:

         You usually see them sold in cellophane bags around the Christmas holidays and, now that I think about it, often on cookie tables at weddings.  
        My friend assured me that in her Italian family a holiday wouldn't be a holiday or a wedding a wedding without pizzelles on the table.
        And so, as I was both short on wedding cookies and lacking pizzelles, she invited me over to her house to take care of two birds with two pizzelle irons.
        So yesterday afternoon another Posse member and I showed up at our friend's  for an afternoon of pizzelle-making.  I brought along the ingredients:

Should have turned out like this.










Turned out like this.  A textbook cookie fail.

   ...while my friend availed us of her  Kitchen Aid mixer,  assortment of state-of-the-art measuring cups and spoons:

    ...and her two beautiful, well-seasoned pizzelle irons:

    My friend's recipe, given to her years ago by  her brother's sister-in-law, was for one batch of pizzelles and called for:
    12 eggs
    1 1/4 cups of oil
    2 cups of sugar
    3 teaspoons of vanilla extract
    4 cups of flour
    Pizzelles generally also include anise flavoring, but as I'm not an anise fan, we opted for vanilla flavoring instead.
    So, our provisions lined up and ready, our friend's husband put on his "Mob Hits" CD  to get us in the mood:

    ...and as we sung along to "Volare" and "That's Amore" our friend guided us through the method    
     1. Plug in the pizzelle irons to allow them to heat up.
    2. Beat the eggs:

   
3.  Add the oil:

   
4.  Mix in the the sugar, one cup at a time:

    5.  Add the vanilla:

    6.  Mix in the flour,  one cup at a time:

   
    7.  Continue beating the batter for about 5 more minutes.

    8.  Drop about one tablespoon of batter - my friend used a big dinner tablespoon, not a measuring spoon - of batter into the center of each pizzelle press.  

   
    9.  Close the iron and cook the pizzelles:

    ...about 30-40 seconds for "blonde" pizzelles, a little longer for "brunette" pizzelles, depending on your preference:

   
    10.  Lay the pizzelles out flat to cool, then once cooled they can be stacked and stored in a plastic container in a cool place or frozen. 

    We ended up with about 8 dozen pizzelles.
    After we finished making our pizzelles our friend showed us her mother's  old pizzelle iron, the kind that was used before there were electric irons:

    This iron would be held over a the flame of a gas stove to heat the metal and cook the pizzelles:

    My friend said that after standing over the stove making several batches of pizzelles for the holidays or a wedding her mother's feet would be swollen.  It made me think of suffering for one's art, in this case edible art: the pizzelles, stamped with their beautiful folk-art designs.
     My Panera Posse friends don't know my neighbor for whom  we spent the afternoon making the wedding pizzelles.   But thanks to the kind helpful hearts of these good ladies - and one good lady's husband, who, besides providing the great music also pitched in with the work - there will be cookies galore and there will be pizzelles for the wedding of the daughter of another good lady, who has kind and helpful heart herself.
    Maybe that's what makes the world go 'round.