Leave the sombrero, take the cannoli!

Another day at home.... the house is clean, the laundry done. Oh, what to do?

:) :) :) Says the evil domestic goddess......

I have been obsessed with the thought of making cannoli.

We were at a very authentic little Italian restaurant a few weeks ago. "Fresh cannoli"was on the menu board. While we were waiting for our pizza, I was entertaining this wonderful dessert fantasy. A little old Italian lady hobbled in. The little old Italian lady running the place greets her, IN ITALIAN. The customer lady asks after the cannoli, and come to find out the lady has one left for her husband, and two for her customer. She warned her that they may not be that fresh, as they were ready at 10am. (It is merely NOON, btw.....) The lady actually apologizes for being so late, but is happy to get any cannoli she can get. HER husband wanted one too, [interject dainty little Italian grandmother giggle]

I can't honestly remember the last time I actually ate a cannoli(o). I have a vague New York City memory from when I was about 10 that was disappointing: not sweet enough, maybe the seasoning (booze) was too strong.... But can't get the darn things out of my head now...that I'm old. And bored.

Good bye dessert, but HELLO PROJECT!

I have now read a whole bunch of stuff on cannoli. Andrea and her husband are my foremost authorities. They actually have real Italian grandmothers. Their general advice was not to be disappointed--cannoli are tricky little buggers. This sentiment was repeated across the internet.
I was prepared for time and mess.

What wasn't repeated was one darn recipe. There were barely any that were even close to each other. Andrea was tied up with kids and work, so I decided to go ahead and at least find a frame of reference recipe to start with. I found one that seemed promising on Serious Eats.com: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/10/homemade-cannoli-fresh-ricotta-recipe.html This one seemed fairly simple compared to some of the other recipes.

I just accept the fact that I can't pan-fry anything to save my life, so I super-cheated and heated up the deep fryer to 350. (all the Italian grandmothers moan and groan.....) Honestly, I think that it made things a heck of a lot easier and safer. Andrea complained that she got totally burned by flying oil using the pan method. The little pastry shells crisped up perfectly without any fuss, and no more mess than I normally have when I use the deep fryer.

I used the pasta machine on setting #3 to roll out the dough. I probably could and should have gotten it thinner, but it worked for a first time try.

Dad's homemade taco tool (see pics) doubled as a perfect cannoli tube. (hence the sombrero quip) You can buy some pretty nice cannoli kits for a lot of $$... Gotta feel nice and smug about that. Although one girl on the blog was saying that her grandmother used an old broomstick. (eww?)

It helped to wet the edges of the dough with some egg to make it stick. Before I figured that out I had a couple really nice pieces of fried dough because it fell off the tube. The other common complaint was that unless you had more than one tube, it took forever and was hard to coordinate the wrapping, frying, cooling and filling. I only had the one tube, and wayyy too much free time. It probably made it a more relaxing experience that way since I could really only make one at a time. It took 3 minutes to cook one, and about 6 minutes to cool. The pastry fried right around the tube, and then just slid off when I took it out of the oil. Filling took about two seconds--good ol' pastry bag.

I didn't have anything fancy lying around to decorate the ends with, so I just sprinkled them with powdered sugar. The filling was super simple: ricotta, granulated sugar, cinnamon and a pinch of salt. Andrea suggested draining the ricotta which I did for about 5 hours on layers of paper towels that I changed 4-5 times.

Can I hear a collective YUM? I have no idea if they are "authentic", but they are very, very delicious.

Uhhmmmm..... was it wrong to (only) eat cannoli and spiedies for lunch?