The first one out of the gate -- pizzelles

Somehow, it's three days before Christmas and I've just now ruined my first batch of holiday cookies. Pizzelles.
Never heard of them? 
I'm less surprised by that all the time. They're the typically (but not exclusively) anise-flavored, thin and round, waffle-type cookie.
Apparently, they're kind of a regional thing; in the past year I've introduced a southerner and an Albany-area resident to  them. I can't say I remember when I first ate one, but I first made them 10 Christmases ago when I decided to give half a dozen or so to each member of my staff of roughly 24.
It didn't look like much, but the effort that went into making three different flavors had to count for something.
There were a lot of lessons in that adventure:
1) Things go twice as fast if you have 2 pizzelle irons (and manage to recall which one is apt to be done when).
2) By the way, those ready/done lights? Not so reliable.
3) When the folks at Cuisinart say "may need greasing," they mean "grease well or spend hours scraping pizzelle particles off the iron."
4) Recipe says it makes 35-40? Don't count on it. Those eaten or incinerated by bad timing aren't subtracted. 
5) It's true. You never know what you'll find online. Searching for pizzelle recipes, I clicked a link that took me to a story about pizzelle makers earning a spot on the list of Top 10 small home appliances for pleasuring one's self. Ouch.
Today's cookie making didn't lead to anything that, um ... visual. But, since I hadn't made pizzelles in a few years, I had to relearn some lessons. The hard way. Again.
When the no-brand pizzelle iron repeatedly burned the cookies, I unplugged it. But then, cookie bits launched an offensive to stay lodged in the Cuisinart's crevices, so I  unplugged it, juiced the other back up and crossed my fingers that my timing would improve. 
The secret: Lift the top when you don't think they could possibly be golden.
On top of that challenge, it wasn't until the last batch that I remembered the iron's idiosyncrasy: Unless you want cookies that resemble a waxing or waning moon, the batter has to be placed above the design's center to reach all of its edges. Seems silly but it works, as long as you don't mind the batter that drips out the back and cooks onto the iron.
The downside of so much trial and error (or at least the error part) is that I now have three kinds of pizzelles that you can't tell apart on sight.
I'd put a drop of red food coloring in the raspberry-flavored ones, but they browned badly enough to look like the chocolate ones, some of which are spotted with chocolate in such a way that they look like almond ones imbedded with the Cuisinart's cookie bits.
I suppose there are worse things than having to eat them to figure out which is which.