Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Cannoli


I adore this classic Italian dessert. I tasted this once and am in love with this. Deep fried tube shaped pastry shell stuffed with the mixture of ricotta cheese and sugar and dipped in nuts. Who won't like these!! I am not a big fan of deep frying. So I was trying to bake cannoli pastry shell for a while. Finally after several tries here is the perfected recipe !
          I have made various types of stuffings.This recipe (stuffing only) is just a guideline.You can add  any flavor combination that you like. These 3 happen to be my favorites. Here I am sharing the recipe for mocha flavored stuffing. Generally the filling is made with ricotta cheese, however I have stuffed cannoli with custard, ice cream, whipped cream and they all taste equally good.

Kesar Ilayahci kulfi with almonds
Mocha fillling with hazelnuts


Orange with pistachios



Ingredients :
For the pastry :
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
pinch of salt
1 and 1/4 tea spoon baking powder
2 tb spoons sugar
1 and 1/2 tb spoon cold butter
2 tb spoons sour cream
1/4 cup cold water

For the filling ( Mocha)
1/3 cup heavy whipping cream
2 tb spoons sugar
1 tea spoon instant coffee powder
1 tb spoon warm water
2-3 tb spoons grated dark chocolate

mini semi-sweet chocolate chips and chopped hazelnuts to decorate.


Method :

For the pastry, add the flours,salt ,sugar,baking powder in a food processor and pulse a few times. Add cold butter and sour cream and pulse again for a minute. After a minute, keeping the food processor running, add water slowly to incorporate everything into a ball. Once mixture starts to come together, stop pulsing. Remove from food processor, knead the mixture a few times to form a ball, wrap in a plastic wrap and chill for atleast half an hour.
               You get Cannoli forms in the market that you can use or else you can do what I did.Tightly roll the heavy duty foil into a cylinder shape and use that as a cannoli form. Divide the chilled dough into 20 small balls. Roll each ball to make a thin circle.Wrap this rolled dough around the oiled/buttered  'cannoli form' and set aside. Make the rest of cannoli. Preheat the oven to 350F. Place cannoli onto a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven after 10 minutes and remove the half baked pastry shell carefully from the form.It comes off very easily. Bake for another 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool to room temperature before stuffing them. These empty shells can last up to 2 days at room temperature.
             To make the stuffing, dissolve a teaspoon instant coffee powder in a tablespoon warm water and set aside to cool it down. Whip the cream with sugar and the dissolved coffee until firm peaks. Add ricotta cheese and whip again. Add grated chocolate and mix. Fill the piping bag with the mixture and stuff the cannoli shells from both ends. Dip the stuffed shells into mini chocolate chips and hazelnuts and chill for half an hour so that the filling hardens a little. They are ready to serve!

Note:
Stuffed cannoli will stay crunchy for 3-4 hours. After that it turns soggy.




  

7 comments:

  1. Even better if you make it for me! :)

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  2. ET, I will love to make it for you! :-)

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  3. How much ricotta cheese do we use? Really want to try out this recipe!

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  4. It all depends on the size of the cannoli shells. I would use 1/4 cup ricotta cheese to stuff 2-3 cannoli. Do let me know how it works out pkstars! :)

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  5. Hi! You haven't mentioned how much ricotta cheese is to be used for the filling in this recipe?? Please let me know soon. Thanks!

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  6. I would use 1/4 cup ricotta cheese to stuff 3 cannoli. Could be less or more depending upon the size of the pastry itself! :) Hope this helps.

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