The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.
I'm finally back in the kitchen for the Daring Baker's challenge. Of course, I'm running a bit late this month with Thanksgiving in the mix but I did get a chance to make these last night. I've never made cannoli before and they were easier and faster than I expected, I think I'll make more!
I've also been dissuaded from making them after tasting them at the bakeshop. Whatever it is that is sold as cannoli doesn't come close to the real thing. For one thing, the shells are sometimes baked rather than fried and have no flavor at all. For another, the commercial filling seems to be a combination of shortening and powdered sugar. It coats your mouth and doesn't melt and makes you feel like you just ate a mouth full of Crisco. With that lovely experience, who would want to try that at home?
But the shoddy bakeshop varieties must have been cheap attempts to approximate a tantalizing original and the original is rather nice. The fried cannoli shell is a lovely contrast to the filling with a slightly spiced flavor of it's own. You don't taste the wine in the dough, the wine helps to relax the gluten that's formed to make it more manageable. I made the ricotta filling with orange and chocolate and the flavor was sophisticated and a nice compliment to the light texture of the ricotta. One drawback was that the ricotta didn't get quite as smooth as I think I would like, I might try a mascarpone version. But with the chocolate flakes stirred in you don't really notice or mind the texture of the ricotta.
I have to admit your cannoli looks perfect so blistered and warty and the filling sounds delicious bravo on your efforts. Cheers from Audax in Australia.
Posted by: Audax Artifex | November 30, 2009 at 06:10 AM