Pizzelle (The Thin Iron-Pressed Wafer From Abruzzo)
A pizzelle is a thin, crisp Italian wafer cookie from Abruzzo. It is pressed between the hot patterned plates of an iron, usually with a snowflake design.
Say it: peet-SEL-eh
Also called: Piazella, Ferratella, Ferratelle
By Andrew Cooks · Updated · 15 min read
At a glance
A pizzelle is a thin, flat, crisp Italian cookie cooked by pressing a spoonful of batter between the two hot patterned plates of an iron, so it comes out round, wafer-thin and embossed all over with a design: most often a snowflake. It comes from Abruzzo, in central Italy, and it has a decent claim to being among the oldest cookies still made. The batter is very simple: egg, sugar, flour, butter or oil; and the flavor is traditionally anise, though vanilla and lemon are now at least as common. It is not a waffle: a waffle is a leavened batter cooked soft, while a pizzelle is a stiff sweet batter cooked thin and dry until it snaps. The thing worth knowing is what to do in the ten seconds after it leaves the iron, when it is still hot and floppy: roll it round a dowel and it sets into a tube for filling, drape it over a cup and it becomes a bowl, fold it and it is a cone. Once cool it is rigid and cannot be shaped at all.
What it does for you
A pizzelle turns a wet batter into a dry, rigid wafer in about thirty seconds, and it does it by pressing rather than baking. The two plates of the iron clamp the batter into a very thin layer with a great deal of hot metal in direct contact with both faces at once, so the water in the batter boils off almost immediately (that is the steam you see pouring out of the sides) and what remains sets hard.
Cook's tip
Have the dowel or upturned cup ready before the iron opens, because a pizzelle stays pliable for only about ten seconds before it sets rigid. Cool flat ones on a cooling rack, not a plate, so trapped steam does not soften the base.
Kitchen trivia
Did you know old pizzelle irons were carved with a family's own crest, so the cookie came out signed?
See the answerCommon uses
In Abruzzo and among Italian families abroad, pizzelle are the cookie of occasions: Christmas and Easter above all, but also weddings, christenings and funerals, and they are made in very large quantities, stacked in tins and given away. They are eaten plain with coffee or a glass of wine, dusted with powdered sugar, and they are one of the standard items on an Italian-American Christmas cookie tray, where their fragility and their snowflake pattern have made them a fixture. Their second life is structural, and it comes from that brief window of pliability when they leave the iron.
Rolled around a wooden dowel they set into rigid tubes, which are filled with sweetened ricotta in the manner of a cannoli, or with whipped cream, custard or chocolate; folded, they make cones; and draped over an upturned cup or bowl they set into shallow ruffled dishes for holding ice cream, gelato or fruit. They are used as wafers alongside desserts and ice cream, layered with mascarpone or cream into quick composed puddings, sandwiched in pairs around ganache or jam, and crushed as a topping. Savory versions exist too and are traditional in parts of Abruzzo: made with black pepper and no sugar, or with cheese, and served with cured meats.
Pizzelle are quick, easy and slightly addictive to make, and the entire skill is in the timing. Make a stiff batter: eggs, sugar, melted butter, flour and your flavoring, traditionally anise, and it should be thick and dropping rather than pourable, closer to a soft dough than a pancake batter. Let the iron get properly hot before the first one; the first pizzelle is always a sacrifice, and every experienced maker knows it and does not mourn it.
Drop a rounded teaspoonful just behind the center of the pattern: too much and it squeezes out everywhere, too little and you get a small disc with a lacy tattered rim. Close the iron, press gently, and wait. Steam will pour out of the sides; that is the water leaving, and it is meant to.
Around thirty seconds gives a pale, tender pizzelle and forty-five to sixty gives a properly crisp golden one, so this is where you decide what you are making. Then move fast, because you have about ten seconds. If you want a tube, lift it straight onto a wooden dowel and roll; for a cone, fold it round; for a bowl, drape it over an upturned cup and press gently.
If you want it flat, lay it on a cooling rack, not on a plate, where the trapped steam will soften the underside. Once it cools it is set for good and will shatter rather than bend, so if you hesitate, the decision has been made for you. Store them in a tin, in layers, with the lid tight: they take up moisture from the air within hours and go limp, and a few minutes in a low oven brings them back.
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Save your recipes in Cooked.it, freeWhat it is
A pizzelle is a thin, crisp, embossed Italian wafer cookie originating in the Abruzzo region, made from a simple batter of egg, sugar, flour and butter or oil, traditionally flavored with anise and now often with vanilla or lemon, cooked for about thirty seconds between the two hot patterned plates of a pizzelle iron, which press it flat and stamp it with a relief design: most characteristically a snowflake. It is distinguished from a waffle, which is a leavened batter cooked thick and soft, and from molded biscuits like springerle and speculoos, which take their image from a carved mold and are then baked. While hot from the iron it is briefly pliable and can be rolled into tubes or cones or draped into bowls, setting rigid as it cools.
Regional Abruzzese names include ferratelle, cancelle and neole. It is regarded as among the oldest cookies still in production.
A pizzelle is a flat disc, typically 10 to 13cm across and only 2 to 3mm thick, pale gold to light brown, and stamped edge to edge on both faces with a pattern in relief. The snowflake is the classic, but old irons carry all sorts: flowers, wheat sheaves, geometric webs, and historically family crests and initials, since the irons were forged individually and a household's iron marked its cookies as its own. The edges are usually irregular and lacy where the batter squeezed out and thinned, and many people trim them and many more do not.
The surface is matt, faintly sandy, and often dusted with powdered sugar. It is crisp to the point of fragility: a pizzelle snaps cleanly with a sharp report and shatters if you are careless, and stacked ones are famous for breaking, which is why they are traditionally packed in tins in layers. Snapped open, there is essentially no crumb to speak of: it is a wafer, dense and glassy in cross-section, with no air pockets and no soft interior.
When shaped while hot it appears as a tube, a cone or a shallow ruffled bowl, and those forms hold their shape rigidly once cool.
Thinness is what makes it crisp: there is simply not enough depth for a soft interior to exist. The pattern is not decoration alone; the relief increases the surface area in contact with the plates, which helps the drying, and the ridges give the fragile disc rigidity in the same way corrugation stiffens cardboard. The batter is deliberately stiff and unleavened or barely leavened, because anything that rose would fill the pattern and blur it, and because a wetter batter would steam rather than crisp.
The most useful property, though, is thermal. Sugar and starch at that temperature are momentarily plastic: for a few seconds after the iron opens, a pizzelle is hot, pliable and floppy, and it can be rolled, folded or draped into any shape you like, and then, as it cools past the point where the sugar sets, it becomes rigid and permanent. That narrow window is the whole basis of its use as a container: tubes to be filled, cones, and bowls for ice cream are all made in those few seconds, and once you have missed the window the cookie will shatter rather than bend.
Substitutions
| Use instead | How much | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| waffle | Not a substitute | A waffle is a leavened batter cooked thick and soft; a pizzelle is a stiff batter pressed thin and crisp: different foods |
| anise | The traditional flavor | Vanilla and lemon are the common modern alternatives; anise oil is far stronger than anise extract, so do not swap them measure for measure |
Swaps that don't work
- waffle iron: Deep pockets and a coarse pattern give a small thick waffle, not a thin embossed wafer: the flat engraved plates are the point: will not do the job
Common mistakes
- Waiting too long to shape them is the classic, and it is unforgiving: a pizzelle is pliable for roughly ten seconds after the iron opens and rigid thereafter, so if you intend to make tubes, cones or bowls, everything must be ready before you start: the dowel in your hand, the cup upturned: and you must move immediately.
- Hesitate, and the cookie sets flat and will shatter if you try to bend it.
- There is no reheating fix worth relying on.
- Using too much batter is the next commonest: it squeezes out of the sides, makes a mess of the iron and gives a thick pizzelle with a ragged skirt, and a rounded teaspoon just behind the center is usually enough.
- Too little gives a small, lacy, incomplete disc.
- Making the batter too thin is a related error: pizzelle batter should be stiff and dropping, closer to a soft dough than a pancake batter, because a wet batter steams and goes limp instead of crisping.
- Not letting the iron come fully up to heat produces a pale, soft, disappointing first few; the first pizzelle is traditionally written off and should be.
- Cooling them on a plate rather than a cooling rack traps steam underneath and softens the base of a cookie whose entire virtue is crispness.
- And storing them badly is the quiet killer: pizzelle absorb moisture from the air within hours and go leathery, so they need a properly airtight tin, ideally layered, and if they have already gone soft, a few minutes in a low oven will crisp them straight back up.
Product picks
- Pizzelle ironSee it on Amazon: pizzelle iron
- Anise extractSee it on Amazon: anise extract
- Cooling rackSee it on Amazon: cooling rack
History
Pizzelle come from Abruzzo, the mountainous region of central Italy, and they are genuinely old: they are commonly described as among the oldest cookies still made, and while such claims are always hard to pin down precisely, the form belongs to a very old European family of wafers cooked between hinged iron plates, a technique whose relatives include the communion wafer, the northern European wafer and the ancestors of the waffle. The irons themselves are the most interesting evidence. Historically they were forged by hand by local blacksmiths, with long handles for holding over an open fire or embers, and each was carved with its own design, which meant a family's iron produced a cookie with a pattern nobody else had, effectively a signature, and irons were part of a bride's household goods and passed down the generations.
Antique pizzelle irons survive with initials, dates and family crests worked into the plates. The cookie's association with the region runs deep enough to have local names in local dialects: ferratelle, cancelle and neole among them, the first of which simply refers to the iron, and it is tied to feast days, notably the celebrations around Saint Constantius in Abruzzo, as well as to Christmas, Easter and the whole cycle of weddings and funerals. The great spread of the pizzelle beyond Italy came with Abruzzese emigration, particularly to the United States, where it became a fixed part of the Italian-American Christmas repertoire and where the modern electric pizzelle iron was made and marketed.
Is it still used today?
Pizzelle are alive on two tracks. In Abruzzo and across Italy they remain a regional and family cookie, tied to feast days and made in quantity at home. In the Italian diaspora, and especially in the United States, they are a genuine institution: the electric pizzelle iron is a standard piece of Italian-American kitchen equipment, given as a wedding present, and the pizzelle is one of the fixtures of the Christmas cookie tray, made by the hundred and packed into tins.
The technology has changed the cookie's reach without changing the cookie: the modern electric iron, which is essentially a waffle iron with flat, finely engraved plates, made a cookie that once required standing over a fire holding heavy tongs into something anyone can make in half an hour, and non-stick plates removed the last difficulty. Flavor has drifted: anise is the tradition, and it divides people sharply, so vanilla and lemon now dominate commercial and much home production, to the usual complaints from the usual quarter. The shaped uses have if anything grown, since a pizzelle rolled into a tube is an easy shortcut to something cannoli-like, and pizzelle bowls for gelato are a restaurant standby.
And the old irons persist as heirlooms: antique hand-forged plates with family crests are collected, displayed and occasionally still used over a fire by people who insist, not without reason, that it makes a better cookie.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between a pizzelle and a waffle?
They are different foods that happen to share a cooking method, and the giveaway is the batter. A waffle is made from a leavened batter (raised with baking powder or yeast and often with beaten egg white folded in), and it is cooked thick, so it puffs into deep pockets and stays soft, fluffy and moist inside, and it is eaten hot, straight away, as a breakfast or a meal. A pizzelle is made from a stiff, sweet, essentially unleavened batter, closer to a cookie dough than to a pour, and it is pressed very thin, so all the water boils off in half a minute and what is left is a dry, rigid, crisp wafer that snaps, and it is eaten cool, days later, as a cookie.
The equipment looks similar and is genuinely related: a modern electric pizzelle iron is essentially a waffle iron with flat, finely engraved plates instead of deep pockets, since the pizzelle needs a fine pattern and no depth at all, while a waffle needs depth and does not care about detail. The family resemblance is real: both descend from the ancient European technique of cooking batter between hinged iron plates, but nobody who has eaten both would confuse them. One is soft and hot; the other snaps.
How do you make pizzelle into cannoli tubes or bowls?
You work fast, and you get everything ready first, because the window is about ten seconds. As a pizzelle comes off the iron it is hot and briefly pliable (the sugar and starch are momentarily plastic), and in those few seconds it will roll, fold or drape into any shape you want, and then it cools past the point where the sugar sets and becomes rigid and permanent. So: for tubes, have a wooden dowel or a thick wooden spoon handle in your hand, lift the pizzelle straight off the iron and roll it round, hold for a couple of seconds, and slide it off.
For cones, fold it round on itself, pinching the point. For bowls, drape it over an upturned cup, glass or small bowl and press the sides down into a ruffle. Then leave them to cool completely before filling or they will soften.
The tubes are filled with sweetened ricotta in the manner of a cannoli, or with whipped cream, custard or chocolate; the bowls hold ice cream or gelato. Two practical points: fill them at the last minute, because a wet filling turns a crisp wafer leathery within an hour, and if you hesitate and the cookie sets flat, do not try to bend it; it will shatter. Just eat that one and go faster with the next.
Why are my pizzelle soft instead of crisp?
Four likely causes, in rough order of probability. First, you did not cook them long enough. Thirty seconds gives a pale, tender pizzelle and forty-five to sixty gives a properly crisp golden one, and if yours are bending rather than snapping, leave them longer and let them take some color: the crispness comes from driving the water out, and that takes time on the iron.
Second, your batter was too thin. Pizzelle batter should be stiff and dropping, closer to a soft dough than a pancake batter, and a wet one steams rather than dries and comes out limp. Third, you cooled them on a plate.
A hot pizzelle laid flat on a solid surface traps its own steam underneath and softens its base, so they must go onto a cooling rack where air can get to both faces. Fourth, and most likely if they were crisp yesterday and are not today, they have absorbed moisture from the air: pizzelle are hygroscopic wafers with an enormous surface area and they go leathery within hours if left out or stored in anything less than a properly airtight tin. That last one is easily fixed: a few minutes in a low oven drives the moisture off and they crisp straight back up, and they will keep for weeks if you then tin them properly.
What flavor should pizzelle be? Anise or vanilla?
Traditionally anise, and there is no getting around the fact that this divides people down the middle. The Abruzzese original is aniseed-scented, and for Italian and Italian-American families of a certain generation the smell of anise is the smell of Christmas and of every wedding and funeral they have attended: it is not a flavoring choice so much as an identity. Others find aniseed medicinal and want no part of it.
So the modern reality is that vanilla and lemon now dominate, in commercial pizzelle and in much home baking, and traditionalists grumble about it, exactly as they do about speculoos losing its spice or springerle losing its anise. All three arguments are the same argument. Practically: anise comes as extract, oil or crushed seed, and the oil is much stronger than the extract, so a recipe written for one will overwhelm you if you use the other; lemon zest with vanilla is the most popular alternative; and almond, orange and chocolate versions all exist and are perfectly good.
There are also savory pizzelle, which surprise people who assume the cookie must be sweet: made with black pepper and no sugar, or with cheese, and eaten with cured meats. Those are traditional in parts of Abruzzo, not a modern invention.
Do I need a special iron to make pizzelle?
Yes, effectively: this is one of the few cookies that genuinely cannot be made without its dedicated machine, because the iron is not just a heat source but the thing that presses the cookie thin and stamps the pattern. A modern electric pizzelle iron is a small countertop appliance, essentially a waffle iron with flat, finely engraved plates rather than deep pockets, and it makes two or four at a time in about thirty seconds each; non-stick plates have made the whole business much easier than it used to be. There is no real substitute.
A waffle iron will not work, because its plates are deep and its pattern coarse, and you will get a small thick waffle rather than a wafer; a krumkake iron is the closest relative and will produce something very similar with a different pattern; and a frying pan will produce nothing at all, since there is no way to press the batter thin. Historically the iron was a pair of long-handled hinged plates forged by a blacksmith and held over the fire or the embers, and each family's iron carried its own carved design, which meant your cookies came out with a pattern that was effectively your household's signature. Antique irons survive with initials, dates and family crests on the plates, they were part of a bride's household goods, and some people still use them over a fire and maintain, plausibly, that the result is better.
Trivia answer
Before pizzelle irons were appliances, they were blacksmith's work: two hinged iron plates on long handles, made to be held over an open fire or a bed of embers, and every one of them was made individually. Which meant every one of them could be carved individually, and they were. A local smith would work a design into the plates, and from then on that household's pizzelle came out stamped with a pattern nobody else in the village had.
Antique irons survive with initials, dates, wheat sheaves, flowers and full family crests worked into the metal, so that the cookie arrived at the table effectively signed by the family that made it. The irons were treated accordingly: they formed part of a bride's household goods, they were handed down through generations, and they are now collected and hung on walls as folk objects in their own right. The pattern that has survived into the electric age is the snowflake, which is why a machine-made pizzelle looks the way it does, but the fine relief has never been merely decorative: it increases the surface area against the hot plates, which helps drive the water out and crisp the wafer, and it stiffens a very fragile disc in the same way corrugation stiffens cardboard.
The Abruzzese dialect name gives the game away too: ferratelle, from the iron itself. The tool named the food.
Related
- Cookie
- Waffle
- Anise
- Waffle iron
- Springerle
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