Martha Monday!

This weekend, I tackled a recipe from Martha Stewart's Cookies. Bratseli are similar to pizzelles, and indeed I made them in my pizzelle iron. Here's Martha's finished result:


Martha's recipe makes 6 dozen. I halved the recipe. At first, I was nervous about the combination of flavors: vanilla, cinnamon and lemon extract (I used lemon juice). However, with the small amounts of each, the flavors blended well.



My hand mixer easily handled the dough.


The dough must be rolled out in small balls before being flattened in the pizzelle iron.

The frustrating thing about this process was not anything in Martha's instructions (which are perfect, of course) but my own pizzelle iron. The heat seemed to fluctuate for uneven baking. The same 1.5 minutes that would leave one batch perfectly golden would burn the next only to have the next batch come out half-right and half-burned.

My major note about this recipe is that it takes a long time. My pizzelle iron can only do 4 cookies at a time, so doing a half batch from start to finish took nearly 1.5 hours.

The cookies were tasty. Not too sweet and not too crispy, they are a perfect accompaniment to tea or coffee. If you have a pizzelle iron, or even a bratseli maker, this is a good recipe to try.

Bratseli: Martha-made, and TMI approved!