I love to give homemade goodies as gifts, especially during the holiday season. Some of my favorite treats to give out include Christmas monster cookies, gooey butter cookies, chocolate spritz cookies, Italian cookies, Christmas sugar cookies, reindeer chow, chocolate covered pretzels and these impressive looking pizzelle cookies from Italy. When I’m looking for a unique and unexpected dessert recipe, I turn to pizzelle cookies. They’re light and crispy, full of flavor, and also happen to be super easy to make. Serve your cookies as-is, or mold them into cup or cone shapes to serve with ice cream and berries.
Pizzelle Ingredients
To make this recipe, you will need large eggs, granulated sugar, milk, butter, vanilla extract, all purpose flour, baking powder, vegetable oil and powdered sugar.
How Do You Make Pizzelle Cookies?
Making pizzelle cookies is a lot like making waffles; just make a batter and cook it on a pizzelle iron. To make the batter, whisk together eggs, granulated sugar, milk, melted butter and vanilla in a large bowl. Sift in flour and baking powder. Stir the batter until it is smooth. Brush a thin coating of vegetable oil on your pizzelle iron and heat up the iron. Pour a tablespoon of batter at the center of each pattern on the iron and close the lid. In about 30 seconds the pizzelles will be cooked to perfect crispness, golden and ready to remove. Let the cookies cool and harden on a rack or flat surface and they are ready to serve with a little powdered sugar on top!
Tips For the Perfect Cookies
If your cookies are coming out uneven, try adding the batter slightly to the back (hinged side) of the center pattern. Closing the lid will push the batter forward. Use a wooden skewer to remove the cookies from the iron. The iron will be hot, so be careful. A good way to know that your cookie is just about finished is that steam will stop coming out of the iron. If you want a perfectly round cookie, you can try adding a little more batter so that the batter spreads outside of the patterns. When the cookies are cool enough to handle, just trim off any excess with kitchen shears.
Flavor Variations
While this recipe is delicious as-is, you can customize the ingredients to suit your tastes.
Flavorings: You can use different extracts to flavor your cookies. Try using a teaspoon of almond, lemon, orange or anise extract instead of the vanilla. Toppings: Instead of powdered sugar, try dipping your cookies halfway in melted chocolate and add some fun sprinkles before the chocolate hardens.
Pizzelle cookies are crispy, golden and so very delicious. They are holiday treats that are good enough to make year round!
