Pizzelle

A pizzella is a disc of sweet batter cooked by compression between two heated, engraved iron plates. The engraving prints the pattern: a honeycomb grid in the most common version, parallel stripes in parts of the L'Aquila province, diamonds elsewhere. Thickness runs from one to five millimetres depending on the iron.

The name changes every few valleys, and none of them is wrong. Ferratelle is the standard Abruzzese word and comes from ferro, iron. Pizzelle is the name that emigrated. Cancelle, neole, nevole and catarrette all belong to specific districts.

There are two families. 'Closed' irons that clamp to a fixed gap produce thick, soft, cake-like cookies. 'Open' tong-style irons let the batter spread and produce very thin, brittle wafers. Same batter, two different cookies.

The defining flavour is anise, from seeds or from anisette liqueur. Lemon zest, vanilla and Aurum, Pescara's orange liqueur, are the accepted alternatives for people who do not like anise, and there are many.

Anise first, and unapologetically: a clean liquorice-adjacent perfume that is closer to fennel than to sweets. If you dislike black liquorice you will notice this immediately, which is why the lemon and vanilla versions exist.

Underneath, the flavour is plain and eggy: sugar, egg, butter or oil, and a toasted-wheat note from the hot iron. Not rich, not chocolatey, not remotely fudgy. A thin pizzella has almost no body: it shatters, dissolves, and is gone.

The thick soft version eats more like a small sponge cake with a crisp printed surface. Both are sweet but not very sweet, which is what makes them work with coffee, sweet wine or a spoonful of jam rather than as a standalone dessert.

Work from a ratio rather than a recipe: per egg, 60 g sugar, 30-40 g melted butter or mild oil, 100 g flour, and either a teaspoon of anise seed or a tablespoon of anisette. Whisk eggs and sugar pale, stream in the fat, fold in flour and flavouring. The batter should drop from a spoon in a ribbon.

Heat the iron fully and grease it once, at the start only. Greasing between each cookie is the single most common cause of sticking. Spoon batter into the centre of the lower plate, close, press. Thirty to sixty seconds on an electric iron; about ninety seconds a side over a gas flame.

The first one is always a write-off. Accept it.

A finished pizzella stays flexible for roughly ten seconds. That is the entire window for rolling it around a wooden handle into a tube, or shaping it into a cone for ice cream. After that it sets and snaps.

Sandwich two with grape jam (in Abruzzo, scrucchiata, made from Montepulciano grapes) or fill rolled ones with sweetened ricotta. Crush the broken ones into a cheesecake base.

Everything about keeping pizzelle comes down to moisture. They are a very dry biscuit, so they pull humidity out of the air and lose their snap, going leathery and pliable in a day or two in a damp kitchen. Let them cool completely flat before storing, since a warm one is still soft and will set into a curl, then stack them in an airtight tin with baking paper between the layers. Sealed and at room temperature they stay crisp for two to three weeks, longer in a dry climate. The fridge is the wrong place: it is humid, and they soften there faster than on the counter.

A few minutes in a low oven drives the absorbed moisture back out and returns the snap. Over months the butter in the dough oxidises and the aroma flattens, and the anise scent in particular fades noticeably. They freeze for a few months in a rigid container so they do not shatter, and are best thawed uncovered so condensation does not settle on the surface. Boxed ones carry a producer date on the packet.

A pizzella is thin enough that the edge goes translucent when you hold it to the light, and the pressed pattern, usually a snowflake, a grid or an old family crest, should be sharp on both faces rather than blurred. The colour is pale gold, not brown. It snaps cleanly rather than bending. The traditional Abruzzese flavouring is anise, which you smell before you taste; vanilla and lemon versions are mostly Italian-American. The ingredient list stays short: flour, eggs, sugar, butter or oil, flavouring.

The look-alikes are easy to sort out once you know them. Dutch stroopwafels are two thicker discs with caramel between them. Norwegian krumkake and goro come off a similar iron but are rolled into cones or cut into rectangles and are usually flavoured with cardamom. Generic waffle cookies in supermarket biscuit aisles are thicker and softer. In Italy the same thing goes by ferratelle, neole, cancellate or catarrette depending on the valley. Italian bakeries abroad tend to charge $8 to $14 a dozen, against $5 to $7 for a boxed supermarket tin.

In the US, pizzelle are easy: Italian grocers, Wegmans, and most supermarkets in the Northeast stock packaged ones from Christmas onward at 5 to 10 dollars a bag, and Italian bakeries in Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Jersey make them fresh. The iron is the real purchase: electric models from CucinaPro, Palmer, VillaWare and Cuisinart run 35 to 90 dollars, and a cast-iron stovetop one costs about the same and lasts forever.

In the UK they are rarer. Italian delicatessens carry imported packs at 4 to 8 pounds, and irons are mostly an online purchase. A Scandinavian krumkake iron is easier to find and does the same job.

In Abruzzo, bakeries sell them by weight year-round at 18 to 28 euros a kilo, usually in 200-300 g bags for 5 to 8 euros.

What to check on a packet: real anise seed rather than 'natural flavouring', and a pale even gold rather than mottled brown. Homemade, fifty pizzelle cost under three euros of ingredients, which is the strongest argument for buying the iron.

Inland Abruzzo, where ferratelle are a year-round bakery item rather than a Christmas one: the belt running from Sulmona through Pescocostanzo to Castel di Sangro is the most reliable stretch.

Sulmona is the double bill: ferratelle and confetti, the sugared almonds the town has been making since the fifteenth century and which end up in wedding favours across Italy. The two often share the same box.

Summer village festivals in July and August are where you find them cooked to order on historic hand irons over a flame, eaten thirty seconds off the plate, which is when they are best.

In Rome, where Abruzzese migrants founded a good share of the historic trattorie, ferratelle still turn up on a few dessert lists, a quiet trace of that migration. And in the US, the Italian-American Christmas cookie tray has preserved the tradition better than some Abruzzese households have.