In addition to my love for Italian motorcycles, I am ethnically 25%, Italian and culturally, probably 90% Italian being raised by my Italian grandmother and Irish grandfather.
Being that I am married to an amazing cook who is a Japanese/ Mexican hybrid and doesn't bake, I've taken up the Christmas cookie duties, though I have been making Christmas dinner with homemade meatballs, sauce, manicotti (including fresh homemade crepe/ noodle), polenta and fresh homemade pasta for the last 40 years.
So far I've done the Italian Christmas cookies. Each year I do a different variety. I also made pizzelles tonight for the first time because my daughter failed me... Normally she makes four or five batches and I get a nice stack, but with three kids it was too hard for her this year so I decided to make them for our house.
Next up will be the ricotta cookies and strufoli for Christmas Day when they visit.
Because the Italian Christmas cookie recipe is so versatile, I always experiment. The red cookies are a bit larger than I had planned, but they have a cherry in the middle and are topped with a vanilla cherry icing.
The larger flat cookies with white icing are the traditional pinwheel where you roll out the dough thin and form it into a pinwheel spiral and bake, then top with icing. That has just vanilla icing with sprinkles. The smaller balls have anise flavored icing. (My favorite)
This is my first year making pizzelles on my own, and the combination of getting the right amount of dough into the iron and then timing. Timing it properly was quite a challenge for me, when I couldn't remember when I started the batch... 35-30 seconds go fast!
Joyous Noel, Feliz Navidad, Buon Natale
