Basic Pizzelles

Recipe claims this makes 25 cookies, but on my first try where I halved the recipe, it only made 10 cookies.

Martha Stewart has a recipe with similar quantities to this one, and she uses both vanilla and anise (1 tsp of each), and 1.25 tsp anise seeds, so I altered the recipe that came with the book to reflect that, and will adjust if it's too much. The first time we tried it, we did 1/2 vanilla and anise, and there wasn't enough anise.

Variation: to make chocolate pizzelles, add 2 T cocoa to the recipe, and drop the anise extract and seeds.

Ingredients

1 C all purpose flour

1/2 C sugar

6 T butter, melted

1 t vanilla extract

1 t anise extract

1 t whole anise seeds, toasted

1 t baking powder

1/4 t salt

2 large eggs

Instructions

1. Coarsely grind the toasted anise seeds with a mortar and pestle.

2. Whisk the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and anise seeds together.

3. Add the melted butter, eggs, and both extracts, mixing until just combined. The batter will be quite a bit thicker than pancake batter, for instance, and thicken up as you make them.

4. Scoop 1 T of batter into the pizzelle iron and cook until golden brown.