Holy Cannoli !

By ctozzi

Ingredients

• Shell:
• 2 cups Flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tbsp shortening
• 2 tbsp powdered sugar
• 3/4 cup sweet marsala wine
• pinch of salt
• 1 egg white for pasting
• 3 1/2 -4 inch round cookie cutter or anything that diameter you have in your kitchen
• Rolling pin
• 4 Cannoli tubes
• Vegetable Oil for frying
• Filling:
• 2 lbs Impastata ricotta or ***regular ricotta drained (see below for special instructions for regular ricotta)
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 tbsp vanilla
• Mini semi-sweet chocolate chips or chocolate shavings
• pinch of orange zest
• pinch of cinnamon
• pinch of cocoa powder (optional)
• 3 tbsp heavy cream or whole milk
• Plastic pastry bag or ziploc bag for piping the filling
• If using regular part skim ricotta from the grocery store, empty cheese into a strainer and put strainer over a bowl to catch the liquid, place in refrigerator overnight. You may also use a cheese cloth to squeeze out the liquid.

Details

Adapted from inner-gourmet.com

Preparation

Step 1

1. For shells- place all dry ingredients in a food processor and pulse until all the cinnamon has disappeared into the flour. If you don't have a food processor, you can sift this by hand, you will also have to knead this by hand and the recipe continues.

2. Now add the shortening and marsala wine. Pulse till the dough forms a ball. If doing this by hand keep mixing till the dough comes together into a ball. Now place ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 -2 hours.

3. After your cheese has soaked overnight (if you are using regular ricotta) and is dry and smooth, mix in all ingredients, but add milk 1 tbsp at a time until the consistency is like that of a spreadable butter. Once you have everything mixed in, FOLD in the chocolate that you are using. cover the bowl and put into refrigerator.

4. Heat the oil. Fill the skillet or deep frying pan half way up the side with vegetable oil. Let this heat up while you being working with the dough. After 1-2 hours have passed for the dough, remove from fridge and cut into quarters. Work with one quarter at a time leaving the other quarters covered under the plastic wrap. Roll the quarter piece of dough till it is really thin almost paper like. If it is at all too thick your cannoli shells will be hard and stiff not flaky at all. This is traditionally done with a pasta machine, if you have one great but if not, then roll this as thin as you can get it remembering to flour your surface and rolling pin often.


5. After you have rolled the dough to the thinnest possible, cut as many circles as you can with the cookie cutter. If you don't have a cutter you can print a 4 inch circle and cut it out from the paper and use that as your guide.

6. Place the cannoli tube in the center of one of the circle cut outs from the dough and roll one end onto the cannoli tube and rub some egg white on it, then bring the other end of the circle cut out to meet that end with the egg white. The egg white side should be on the bottom. Look at the pictures I have posted to see what it is supposed to look like.

7. Set up a pan with lots of tissue to soak up the oil from frying. The oil should be temped at 360 degrees. If you don't have a thermometer then sprinkle some flour in the oil and if it quickly goes to the side then you know the oil is ready.



8. Drop the cannoli tubes in the oil, 2 at a time and fry for JUST A FEW SECONDS! you want a nice light color not dark and burnt! After you fry it for just a few seconds, with a spatula, remove cannoli shells from oil and place on the pan with the tissues. Gently slide the cannoli shell off of the tube and put back into the oil to fry for another FEW SECONDS. The reason for doing this is to ensure the inside of the shell also gets a nice browned color. Repeat this step till your dough is finished or you have the amount of shells you need. The dough can be kept in the freezer if you don't want to use all of it.


9. After frying all the shells, let them cool for a few hours or even overnight. I actually made my filling and shells on the same night and didn't assemble the cannoli until the next day.


10. Fill your pastry bag with the cannoli cheese filling using your favorite tip (I recommend a tip with a big opening since the cheese is so thick) and pipe the filling into each shell from both sides.
If you don't have a pastry bag, get a zip loc bag and fill it with cheese then cut one of the tips off (a tiny cut) and squeeze cheese into shells this way.


11. Place on a platter and decorate as desired. You may drizzle chocolate or dip the ends in mini chocolate chips etc.