Pizzells, My Mom's recipie, some history, and a ramble

Firstly, a few clips from various "Googles"  about pizzelles

  

Pizzelle (Italian pronunciation: [pitˈtsɛlle], singular pizzella) are traditional Italian waffle cookies made from flour, eggs, sugar, butter or vegetable oil, and flavoring (usually anise or anisette, less commonly vanilla or lemon zest).

Pizzelles are the oldest known cookie and originated in the mid-section of Italy. They were made many years ago for the “Festival of the Snakes” also known as the “Feast Day of San Domenico” in the village of Colcullo in the Italian region of Abruzzo.Nov 30, 2020

 

Pizzelle originated centuries ago in the Abruzzo region of south-central Italy, according to 19th-century Italian historian Giuseppe Tassini, and are still common in the neighboring regions of Molise (formerly part of Abruzzo) and Lazio, home of Rome.

 

 

According to history, the first pizzelle cookies were made in the region of Abruzzo (geographically located in Central Italy) back in the 8th century. These highly recognizable Italian cookies get their shape by flattening the batter between two hot iron plates (just like waffles).Mar 6, 2021

 

 

 

 

Classic Pizzelle

No Italian-American holiday is complete without crisp, buttery pizzelle. Rather than the typical anise flavor, we've made them a bit more neutral with a splash of good quality vanilla. Nonna turning over in her grave? You can still use the anise.

Prep

55 mins

Total

55 mins

Yield

30 to 50 pizzelle, depending on size

Ingredients

• 3 large eggs
• 3/4 cup (149g) sugar
• 3/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 3/4 cups (210g) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 8 tablespoons (113g) butter, melted

Instructions

1. Beat the eggs, sugar, salt, and vanilla until well combined.

2. Stir in the flour and baking powder, mixing until smooth.

3. Add the melted butter, again mixing until smooth; the batter will be thick and soft.

4. Heat your pizzelle iron. Grease it as directed in the manufacturer's instructions. As the iron heats, the batter will stiffen.

5. Cook the pizzelle according to the instructions that came with your iron. In general, they'll take between 45 seconds and 2 1/2 minutes to brown.

6. Remove the pizzelle from the iron, and cool on a rack. If desired, use a pair of scissors to trim any ragged edges.

7. Dust cooled pizzelle with confectioners' sugar, if desired.

Tips from our Bakers

• Flavor to taste: classic pizzelle are often flavored with anise extract or anise seed. Butter-rum, lemon, or rum flavors are also delicious. Simply add extract to the batter to taste. Start with 1/4 teaspoon; amounts will vary a lot, depending on the strength of the extract you choose.
• One reader suggests the best way to grease your pizzelle iron is to dip a towel in vegetable oil, and wipe it all over the iron's interior plates. This helps avoid the sticky residue you may get from spraying the iron with non-stick spray.

THE GooD folks at King Arthur flour like us so much they have an answer line......855 371  2253 {toll free}

 

When I was a kiddo, my mom had a pizzelle iron like this one.  Each year before Christmas I would come home from school to find her working at the kitchen stove making pizelle, and eating the ones that either got too toasty or broke as they came out of the pizzelle iron.  the iron rested on the burner of the old gas stove and Mom would drop balls of dough one by one onto the hot iron close the lid wait a bit and flip it over resting that side of the iron on the burner, then open the iron and lift the soft cookie out with a fork and place it gently on the pile that were cooling and getting delightfully crispy.  her favorite was anise, a taste I never acquired, though I have saved a bottle of anise flavoring carefully all these years.  My dad liked the chocolate...which was really good, as was the coffee, ground nut and vanilla ones.  she made mountains of pizzelle and often wrapped them in cling wraps  and froze them.  Coffee and pizzels was a common winter breakfast or snack.  Mom liked to edit or even redo recipes, making them the way she thought they should be made, Oh, and her recipes, the few she wrote down were pretty much just list of ingredients. 

Mom's pizzells

 

7 to 8 cups of flour

1/4 cup baking powder 

1/4 cup oleo  {use butter}

1/4 lard      {use butter]

6 eggs

2 cups sugar

2 tsp anise oil

You may add a little more sugar

Flour can vary depending on the weather.

Do not cook the same day you make the dough.

 

 Enjoy!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

guest blogger Livia Gershon from The Smithsonian~~~sweet Treats from Stonehenge

Stonehenge's Builders May Have Feasted on Sweet Treats

Livia Gershon

5-6 minutes

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Neolithic people may have cooked predecessors of modern mince pies on stones heated in a fire's embers. Andre Pattenden / English Heritage

Travelers visiting Stonehenge this month can sample a dish that may have been enjoyed by the monument’s builders some 4,500 years ago. As Alex Green reports for PA Media, volunteers with English Heritage, the organization that cares for the prehistoric site, are cooking up mince pies with ingredients used by these Neolithic workers, including hazelnuts and crab apples.

Excavations at Durrington Walls, a settlement where Stonehenge’s creators lived around 2500 B.C.E., have previously yielded fruits and hazelnuts, as well as pork, beef and dairy products. No evidence suggests that the site’s inhabitants turned these foods into pies, but English Heritage notes that they presumably had all the necessary ingredients for the meal. People at the time grew cereal crops and may have used wheat, hazelnut or acorn flour to bake treats on flat stones or ceramic pots heated in a fire’s embers.

“Adding meat fats to hazelnuts and fruit would have made a great energy bar, full of calories,” says Susan Greaney, senior properties historian at English Heritage, in a statement.

Much like today, Neolithic people didn’t appreciate food purely for its nutritional value. Seasonal feasts may have represented celebrations and opportunities for community bonding, particularly with those traveling from a great distance to participate in the enormous Stonehenge building project.

“We’ll never know for certain what recipes they favored, but it’s fun to imagine travelers being greeted with a tray of mince pies,” Greaney says.

Volunteers at Stonehenge are baking the "Neolithic-inspired mince pies" every Monday in December. Andre Pattenden / English Heritage

Research shows that the winter solstice was a key time for the individuals who lived and worked at Stonehenge. Visitors from as far away as Scotland traveled to the monument, bringing cows and pigs for feasts, reports Steven Morris for the Guardian. 

The Stonehenge Riverside Project, a collaborative effort by academics at five universities in the United Kingdom, found evidence of fruit- and nut-gathering at Durrington Walls, which stands 1.5 miles northeast of Stonehenge itself. Trash heaps near ancient homes contained the remains of hazelnuts, crab apples and sloes (also known as blackthorns, the berries are used to make sloe gin). 

Stonehenge was built in several stages, with the earliest henge monument at the site constructed around 3000 B.C.E. The iconic stone circle seen today was erected around 500 years later. Building activity continued in the area for hundreds of years.

Much of the evidence about these workers’ eating habits comes from the settlement at Durrington Walls, which housed hundreds of prehistoric people during a relatively short period of 50 to 100 years, as Morris wrote for the Guardian in 2017.

Per BBC News, volunteers will bake pies inspired by the discoveries around the hearth in Stonehenge’s Neolithic Houses every Monday in December. For those unable to make it to Wiltshire, English Heritage offers two recipes for Neolithic-inspired mince pies. One uses authentic Stone Age ingredients and open-fire cooking, while the other is adapted for modern kitchens. The Neolithic recipe calls for flour made from acorn and einkorn, the oldest known form of wheat, as well as lard, rose hips and fruit.

Ancient Civilizations British History Desserts England European History Food Food History Monument Stonehenge