How interesting! Now I'm going to *have to* find out what those pizzelles are. They sound like Zeppole before you make them into circle loops for frying. But the word sounds like it has "dati" at the end, like "cucidati" cookies, which are much fancier with fruits and nuts in them.
I did an Italian Christmas dessert buffet thing once and studied up on some of those before I made them. I'm not Italian or Sicilian, but love the idea of St. Joseph's altars, especially the sweets - so I've kind of nade a hobby of them.
Well, if you ever happen to find yourself in San Fratello, Sicily...
My father actually has Grandma's pizza recipe, so in a sense we do have the recipe for wushdede. My gran never had a written recipe for her pizza, just knew how to make it from memory. When she was in her 80s, my father spent a day making pizza with her, and made her stop every two minutes so he could measure out her ingredients and take notes. She would literally grab a big handful of shortening and my dad would have to scrape it from her hand to get a measurement. Her recipe made enough dough for six 11" x 16" pizzas (NEVER round!!!), two 12 ounce loaves of sausage bread, and about a dozen pieces of wushdede. It was the only way she could make pizza--by the truckload. Man, could she bake.
Also, I'm betting you're right about the spelling--it is probably something along the lines of -diti or -dati. The San Fratellan dialect is so far removed from every other dialect on the island that my grandparents could only understand each other if they both spoke Italian. Good thing they both learned English!