Daring Bakers November: Cannoli

In preparation for this month's challenge, I went to Lina's Italian Market and tried one of their Sicilian Cannolo.

Mmm, it was scrumptious! The pastry shell was dense, slightly sweet and flaky all at once, and the sweet ricotta filling had a kick (brandy?) that offset the richness. Somehow I was able to eat the whole thing. Then, I embarked on my own cannoli journey...

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 made the dough with cheap red wine instead of sweet marsala cooking wine, which I couldn't find. The dough is pinkish thanks to the wine, and I think that is part of the reason they were far more tender than they're supposed to be.

I used a cup to cut out circles, and then ran them through the pasta maker again to make them into ovals.

The dough, wrapped around metal cannoli forms. The recipe said to use egg white to seal, but I used soy milk and it worked perfectly.

The first cannolo frying...

This one popped off the cannoli form, I think because I only sealed it with water.

Cooling the forms so I can remove them from the shells.

Finished cookin'!

Lovely blistering of the pastry.

A beater from the filling-making process. I thought I took photos of the ricotta that I made from scratch but I guess not. It was wonderful, though! I combined ricotta with sugar, cinnamon, amaretto, and chocolate chips.

I meant to make a nice little finale photo out of the finished product. But I got so frustrated using my piping bag that I just took a shot and ate one of 'em. The chocolate chips I used were too big to fit through the tip of the bag and a huge mess ensued. Sigh...

I also fried up all the dough scraps and dusted them with icing sugar, mmm.