Chef’s Choice PizzellePro Review

I really look forward to doing kitchen gadget reviews when the purpose of the gadget is to make something yummy. Today I want to show you the Pizzelle Pro Express Bake 834 from Chef’sChoice. If you are not familiar with pizzelles, they are crisp thin cookies that originated in Italy. Jeanne has wanted one forever, so I was super happy when the folks at Chef’sChoice offered to send one to me to review. Let’s take a look.

Package Contents

PizzellePro device
Cannoli wooden roller
Instruction / Recipe booklet

The pizzelle maker looks like a small waffle iron, which is what it basically is. It has a chrome top and bottom, with a long Black plastic handle.

The handle has a trigger mechanism that you press as you lift the lid.

You can make 2 pizzelles at one time with this cooker. As you see, there are non-stick heating elements on the top and bottom, with attractive snowflake patterns that bake into the pizzelle as they cook.

The heating elements are not removable, so you have to wipe them clean (you can not dunk the whole unit into the sink).

The attached cord can wrap around the bottom of the cooker for easier storage. The instruction booklet states that the PizzellePro can be stored standing upright, but this really isn’t true because it will fall over. Of course, it could be wedged against another appliance in your cabinet.

Ok, let’s get cooking!

The recipe booklet that ships with the cooker only includes 2 basic recipes. Each one makes about 6 dozen 4 inch pizzelles. Since there are only two of us in my house and neither one of us needs to eat that many sweets, we cut the recipe in half. The main ingredients are eggs, butter, flour, baking power and sugar. To flavor the pizzelles, you can use Anise, Vanilla, Lemon, Almond, etc. We decided to go the traditional route and use Anise.

Once the batter is ready, all you do is plug in the cooker and wait for the Red LED on the lid to go out.

Then you lift the lid and place a teaspoon of the mixture in the center of each heated plate and close the lid. At this point you only have to wait about 20 seconds till the baked pizzelle is ready to be removed. I really wish the cooker had some type of timer instead of us having to count out 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi … 20 Mississippi a bazillion times.

The finished product is a thin lightly sweet cookie. You can remove the pizzelles and plop on two more dollops of batter to cook the next batch. There is no need to wait for the cooker to heat back up.

You can leave them plain or sprinkle some powdered sugar on top.

Click the image above to see a larger view.

The PizzellePro from Chef’sChoice is really easy to use. We made a half batch (around 35 pizzelles) in about 30 minutes, including the time it took to mix the batter and read the instructions. Even better is the the fact that clean up was just a simple matter of wiping down the plates after they had cooled.

I know we’ll end up experimenting with different flavors (I want to try Orange extract) and might even try cannollis sometime (you roll the pizzelle into a tube and fill with icing, cream, etc.). Making pizzelles could be a fun family activity for the holidays or anytime when your sweet tooth starts aching.