Mini-Granny

Last year for Christmas, Dad and Candy bought me one of these...

... inspired by Granny, who is our designated pizzelle maker.  With Christmas on its way, and a holiday party at the Marco residence coming even sooner, I decided to give it a try.  So I printed the recipe that tech-savy Granny emailed me last January...

...put on some Christmas music*...

*Sorry, Meghan... I know we haven't celebrated Thanksgiving yet. 

...and got to work.

These cookies are not for those on a diet.  Yes, that is one pound of butter and 12 eggs, you see there.  I'm not even going to tell you how much sugar goes into these things. 

The pizzelle press came with a spoon to help you measure the right amount of batter for each pizzelle.  I used it for the first few cookies, but wound up just using a teaspoon as Granny had suggested in her email.

It's hard to tell from the picture above, but the batter filled my largest mixing bowl to the top.  In fact, the blue bowl I started out with was too small for the amount of batter this recipe made.  It was full before I had even half of the flour in it.  I had to switch bowls half way through the mixing so that I could add another 4 cups of flour... yes, you read that right... another 4 cups of flour. 

The first few came out kind of small.  It took me several tries to figure out how much batter to use.

Eventually, I got it right ... then I got "daring" and tried a few rolled ones.  The pizzelle maker came with a wooden dowel for rolling pizzelles while they are still warm.  It was pretty easy to do.  I will fill these with some sort of ricotta cheese mixture and mini chocolate chips for our Christmas party.

Kind of looks like a pizzelle-wraped hot dog, doesn't it?  Gross.

Two and a half hours later, I had 13 dozen pizzelles... yes, 13 dozen.  I guess I should have seen that coming when the recipe called for 1 pound of butter, 12 eggs, and 8 cups of flour.  There will be plenty for the party, some to take home, and some to take to work.