Pizzelle, Gluten Free, Anise with Chocolate Variation

Gluten Free Pizzelle Cookies 

(Anise with Chocolate variation)

Adapted from Nick Malgieri by My Little Blue Heron

Pizzelle (pronounced: "peetsellay") are some of the older cookies around - like me. They're wafer cookies, traditionally made on the stovetop using an iron (think thin waffles). These are so easy to whip up and make - particularly in our modern times, since you can crank them out with ease, using an electric iron. I've tested out several electric devices, including the (classic) Palmer, as well as the Chef's Choice, but my fave , by far, is the simplest model that Cuisinart makes. It's compact, non-stick, quick, accurate, and reasonably priced. The manual iron, or stove top, is harder to locate.  I had one but gave it away. 

Traditionally, Pizzelle cookies can lay flat or can be rolled or curved (like tuilles cookies - French for tiles .. the clay ones that are on roofs). They can be dipped, filled, or dusted with sugar. 

You can fool around with flavors! Swap out anise for vanilla or lemon. Try adding some espresso powder (I love King Arthur Flour's) to the chocolate variation. 

Due to the absence of gluten (stretchy protein), manipulating these cookies is a little challenging. I stuck with flat - and that's what I recommend you do, too. King Arthur Flour's All Purpose Gluten Free Flour is excellent and worth the price. Look for sales. Wegman's (it's in NYC now!) is always competitive in its pricing. I don't recommend using  their (or any) "Measure for Measure" flour. My faux of choice is guar gum. For me (and I've read that this is true for others) it doesn't cause stomach upset, and it produces a finer, gentler product. You'll read that you shouldn't use guar gum when baking, but I say guar for it. You may have to alter (increase slightly) quantity with guar - but just a smidge. If you're serious about learning about xanthan v. guar, you can read up on it. Laurent Dran, a genius GF baker, exclusively uses guar gum in his recipes. Xanthan gum is a mold that grows on corn. (His books are in French, so should you decide to purchase, here's an instant translation tool that I found really easy and convenient.) (And it's possible that xanthan isn't available in France, but I kinda doubt it.) And to play it from the opposite corner: other chefs (read about it in Larsen's "Gluten-Free Baking at Home", tout xanthan gum as the binder of choice because it's not from a bean source and it won't cause stomach upset. You'll find convincing arguments for either. I suggest you experiment with both and decide what's best for you.

I adapted these Pizzelle recipes from Nick Malgieri's "Cookies Unlimited" book. You can find a used copy for about $6. If you live in NYC, you can often find used copies at good bookstores like The Strand (which is fun to visit when it's not during Christmas time).

What's impizzellitive is that you WEIGH ingredients for these recipes). PLEASE buy a kitchen scale. Here's Wirecutter Deal's budget pick, which .. if you ACT NOW is at an unbelievable low of ... $9.47 U.S.

MLBH truc: If you have star anise: Please take a glass jar: fill it with some granulated sugar, throw in some star anise, pour in more sugar, repeat. Let sit for several days to several weeks. This sugar will make your pizzelle do the tighten up: 

peace and love,
jane

🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊

Gluten Free Pizzelle Cookies (Anise with Chocolate variation)

Adapted from Nick Malgieri by My Little Blue Heron

Equipment:

An electric pizzelle iron. A kitchen scale.

Ingredients:

314 g. King Arthur all purpose gluten free flour (NOT WITH XANTHAN GUM)

2 g. guar gum

pinch of kosher salt

9 g. baking powder (gluten and aluminum free)

2 eggs, size large, room temperature

1 large egg yolk

2 Tbsp. anisette (or use anise extract, but much less)

160 g, granulated sugar (may be infused with star anise (see MLBH truc above and then see note below)

8 Tbsp./4 oz. unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled

vegetable or palm oil for greasing the iron

Note: If you have anise seeds, you can grind them and throw in a Tbsp. or more, to taste – this is up to you and how much you adore anise. 

Procedure:

1.    In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. (You can place the bowl on the scale, taring after each addition and then remove from scale to whisk.)

2.    In a different bowl, whisk together the eggs, anisette, melted butter and sugar.

3.    Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Mixture will be somewhat stiff.

4.    Heat the pizzelle iron to desired temperature. You’re going to have to experiment with this because every iron is different. Coat the iron lightly with vegetable or palm oil once. You won’t have to do this again unless the cookies begin to stick.

5.   Drop rounded spoonfuls of batter (my iron came with a measured spoon) onto the center of the iron, close the iron and they are usually ready when they stop steaming. The Cuisinart can be adjusted to different settings, and a light tells you when they’re baked. (I turn mine to pretty well done - almost the highest.) Easy!

6.    Remove immediately and place on a cooling rack. Repeat. Repeat .. until all batter is used. You can try rolling them while they’re still warm. Try using a French rolling pin or any cylinder as a mold. You can roll them into cones, dip them in chocolate and fill them with whipped cream!

7.  When cooled, store them in an airtight container. You can dust them with some powdered sugar – pretty.

Chocolate Variation:

1.    Remove 20 grams of gluten free flour

2.    Add 20 gram of unsweetened, dark cocoa powder

3.    Whisk flour and cocoa together well.

You may like the combo of Anise and Chocolate, or you may opt for vanilla extract (1 tsp. or ¼ tsp. Gluten Free vanilla powder made by Authentic Foods), and you could add a chocolate, hazelnut, orange or coffee liquor or extract.

Take care that you don’t overbake chocolate pizzelle cookies. Chocolate becomes bitter when burnt.

Sbrisolona

Sbrisolona

The Ultimate (Gluten-Free) Crumb

Adapted and modified from David Lebovitz by My Little Blue Heron

Crumb is why we bother to eat crumb cake, any crumb pie, crumble, and why Entenmann’s “Fine Baked Goods” one-upped their crumb coffee cake to  “Ultimate Crumb Coffee Cake".  

Sbrisolona is from Mantua, Italy, and it dates back to about the year 600. In its local dialect, brisa means (give up?) "crumb." In 600, basic ingredients were used: corn flour, lard and hazelnuts. (Almonds were a luxury item.) 

My preference is to add anise seed. Gluten-free baking tastes better, even shines, when strutting strong flavors. Grind the seed (coarsely) in your spice grinder (If you don't own one, get a coffee grinder .. the blade kind, and label it, “for spices only”), with a mortar and pestle (did you know that you pronounce it : pɛsəl?), or with a Japanese suribachi. This Japanese mortar and pestle is my favorite grinder. Its greatness lies within its ridges. Because of its design, you can effortlessly grind spices, seed, other dried or semi-dried foods, and sesame seeds into a paste. Here's a link for one in the U.S. on Amazon. 

If you make your own GF blend, I recommend using superfine brown rice and superfine white rice flours. 

Still in its youth, gluten-free baking and flours have begun to grow up. Superfine flours have eliminated that mouthful of sand quality to baked goods. Balancing rice dominance with softer flours and varied starches are producing flour blends that are finally merging taste with texture.

You can substitute wheat flour for gluten-free flour (that felt great!) 

The only dairy I include in my diet is butter, and this recipe screams butter. If you don’t use butter, use the finest butter substitute you can find. I haven’t made this dairy-free, but there are excellent quality non-dairy butters available. If yours has sodium (I haven't seen any "sweet" or "salt-free" non-dairy butters, have you?), omit the salt in the recipe.

If you don't like touching things, you'll need a helper. If you loved Play-Doh, this is like getting the blue. You can use a pastry blender, but there’s no way out of using your hands for the final step of putting this wonderful dough together.

To achieve excellent crumb, be vigilant and patient; and make sure you bake it until it’s golden-brown.

from my little blue heron’s kitchen to yours,

with peace and love,

jane

R. Crumb

Sbrisolona

Ingredients:

1 ½ c./170 g. almonds, toasted for about 6-8 minutes in a preheated 350º oven, until lightly toasted, then cooled

1 ¼ c./175 g. gluten-free flour mix of choice (xanthan gum added)

If no xanthan gum has been added, add ¾ tsp. xanthan gum

¾ c./110g. stone ground cornmeal

½ c./100 g. granulated white sugar

¼ c./45 g. packed, light brown sugar

¾ tsp. Kosher salt

8 oz.(2 sticks)/225 g. unsalted butter, CHILLED and cubed

2 large egg yolks (you can freeze the whites for later use)

½ tsp. each: vanilla extract I highly recommend Baldwin's of West Stockbridge, Mass., almond extract, Fiori Di Sicilia (click here for link to this fantastic flavoring, a distinctively Italian combination of vanilla, orange and citrus.)

zest of one unsprayed or organic orange (JUST the zest .. no white pith)

1 tsp anise seed, coarsely ground optional (but highly recommended)

L-R, Back to Front: whole anise seed, Baldwin's Vanilla Extract, King Arthur Flour "Fiori Di Sicilia"
Japanese suribachi (grinding bowl)

Procedure:

Getting ready: Preheat oven to 350º F. (180º C.) Butter a quarter sheet pan, or a 9-10” square or a round cake pan. Cut butter into small cubes and refrigerate. The butter must be very cold.

Remove 1 c./110 grams of the almonds and ¼ cup/35 g. of the GF flour blend and put in the bowl of your food processor. Pulse until almonds are in small pieces, but are still recognizable as almonds. Don't go all perfectionist about getting them all the same size. Transfer to a large mixing bowl. MLBH Truc: When you pull out a mixing bowl, return it and pull out a bigger one. Always.

Place the remainder of the almonds in the bowl of the food processor and pulse several times until they are in large(r) pieces. For now, leave them in the bowl.

Add the remainder of the dry ingredients to the large bowl that has the first batch of chopped almonds that you pulsed with the flour, mixing well (with a whisk or with your hands.)

In a small bowl, whisk together the orange zest, egg yolks and extracts. Set aside. (If you do this in advance (mise en place), cover with plastic wrap to keep this mixture nice and moist.

Add the cold, cubed butter, and with your hands (or with a pastry blender), cut in the butter or rub with your hands into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles small peas. Again, irregular pieces are fine. What is important is that the butter doesn’t soften too much from the warmth of your hands (work quickly and with your fingers and not the ‘warm’ part of your hand.)

Now, dump in the larger almond pieces and the orange zest/egg yolk/extract mixture. Use a spatula to get every last drop of the wet ingredients into the dry/butter mixture.

With your hands, mix together, squeezing gently, until dough comes together in clumps.

Transfer into your prepared pan. DO NOT pat down the mixture. Leave is in clumps. It’s okay if there’s space between the clumps .. like a crumb topping. It’s critical that you don’t press down or compact the mixture. 

N.B.(If you like raw dough, this recipe is fantastic because it isn't highly sugared. Next time, double the recipe and mix this into vanilla ice cream or some chocolate sorbetto. Three cheers for your next binge/pity party decadent/comfort-food blue ribbon Americanized dessert!)

Bake in preheated oven until golden-brown, approximately 30-40 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool completely before breaking up into uneven pieces. 

Store in an air-tight tin/container for about 5-7 days at a cool room temperature. Freeze Sriboslona for up to two months.