For this week, I decided to try out an Italian dessert that I fondly remember eating a lot of back in Boston. Fun fact: the word “cannoli” is already in its plural form. On a personal note, I am extremely proud that I was able to crank this out despite a series of unfortunate events that have happened over the past couple of weeks. I doubt that anyone would have faulted me for missing this week, but it felt wrong not to continue the challenge – of course, this might change, but I’m crossing my fingers that I won’t have another crisis to dampen my spirit.
Making the Dish
The recipe today comes from the great Claire Saffitz on the NYT Cooking website (and comes with a video!). I had actually considered making these last week, but 1) it was Easter weekend so I ended up sticking with that theme and 2) making cannolis is actually more complex of a process than I initially thought.
The components are simple: making the dough for the shell, making the filling, form and fry the dough, and assemble the cannoli. However, many of the components are quite technical and take some forward thinking (e.g., letting the dough rest for at least 2 hours).
One mistake I made was not allowing the ricotta to drain overnight in the fridge. In hindsight, I think this resulted in a wetter filling that wasn’t as pleasant as some other fillings I’ve eaten in cannoli. The other mistake I made was deciding to wrap the dough around the cannoli forms. Cannoli forms are the stainless steel tubes that you form the dough around and fry with to get the resulting shell. Claire instructs you to only overlap the dough by half an inch and seal. For some reason, when I did this, my shell ended up splaying out at each end instead of forming a slender, consistent cylindrical shape. I thought that if I ignored this instruction and wrapped the shell around the tube, it would create the desired look. Technically, I wasn’t wrong, but this meant that the tubes were extremely difficult to remove, especially since they were slippery from the frying oil.
Eating the Dish
The shell itself had the classic crunch you expect from a cannoli and you can’t go wrong with a chocolate chip topping. Thankfully, my misshapen shells were more disappointing in appearance than they were in taste. As mentioned, the filling was more moist than I am used to experiencing. The lemon zest came through strongly which I didn’t mind, but I wondered if that’s how it was intended to taste.
Summary
All in all, this was an interesting experience, one in which I learned quite a few lessons and truly gave myself a challenge. I doubt that I would ever want to try making these again – the amount of effort for the end result was not worth it in my eyes. I would much rather pay for a store-bought cannoli at one of the famous spots in Boston.