Chocolate-Hazelnut Cannoli and Pumpkin Cannoli (Thanksgiving Recipes)

[bholus10]

Prep Time: 3+ hours | Cook Time: 30 minutes - 1 hour | Serves: 16


Dessert » Cannoli » Italian

Ingredients:

Ah, cannoli. The perfect blend of ricotta cheese and powdered [COLOR=#2B65B0 ! important]sugar[/COLOR]. Sure, there's also a shell, but everyone knows the king of the cannoli is the filling. A supermarket near me (Wegmanns) makes surprisingly good baked goods. Their cannoli, however, are way too sweet for me. So I decided to make my own. There are will be two steps to this: 1) making the shells, and 2) making the filling.

Cannoli Shells:
You can buy premade cannoli shells and they could very well be awesome. Making them, however, is incredibly cheap and pretty easy. Also, I think I've only seen cannoli shells in one place around here. Oddly enough, they're at the [COLOR=#2B65B0 ! important]cheese[/COLOR] shop where I get the ricotta. If you want to buy your shells, then you can just skip this part. Enough rambling.

First, the hardware:
1 deep fryer (oddly enough, mine looks like a pot with a thermometer)
~2 qts of oil (I use canola)
1 set of tongs or one of those big mesh scoops. Something to get the cannoli out.
4 cannoli molds. You can buy these, and I did. I got them on Amazon for about $5 and my whole order got free shipping, so it worked out. However, I've heard of people making their own out of cut-up broom handles and whatnot. I don't have a saw, so I'd have to buy something in order to get cannoli molds so I just bought the molds.

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[bholus10]

Step 1:

The ingredients:

2 c flour
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa
2 tbsp ****er
some Marsala wine
1 egg white, slightly whipped (not pictured)

OK, if you've ever made pasta dough, it's almost identical. The only real difference is the ****er and instead of a water or egg base, it's a wine base. Myself, I like the good stuff. I went to my local liquor store and looked for the most expensive bottle of Marsala wine I could fine. I'm no Mr. Moneybags, but I don't skimp on quality, so I shelled out the necessary $13. The egg is for sealing the dough around the mold, so we won't use it for a little while yet.

[bholus10]

Step 2:

Anyway, I didn't take pictures of the individual steps since my hands were covered in flour and wine.

First, sift together the flour, cinnamon, sugar, and cocoa. I nuked the ****er for a little while to soften it and then mixed it in with my hands. Next comes the wine.

Again, if you've made pasta dough, add it like you would water. If you haven't, just add a very little bit at a time (about a tbsp at a time or less). Mix each addition thoroughly with your hands before adding more.

What your looking for is a dough that's a little stiff, stays together, but isn't sticky. If your dough breaks apart, add a little more wine and work it together. If it's sticky, add a pinch of flour and combine. When I say add a little, I mean it. A little goes a long way. Here's what I ended up with.

Sorry for the ****py picture, but trust me when I say that it works out great. I let it chill in the fridge for about an hour because all the recipes said to. I admit I have no idea why.

[bholus10]

Step 3:

Once it's chilled, we get to the no-fun part - rolling it out and cutting. Now, all the recipes I found online will tell you to get a rolling pin and flatten it to 1/8" to 1/16" thick. I did that the first time, too. But then I remembered my comparisons to pasta dough and whipped out this:

My handy-dandy hand cranked pasta maker. It's cheap, made of solid steel, and works like a charm. If you have one, I highly recommend that you use it. If you don't have one, get one and use it. They're actually pretty inexpensive.

Anyway, they way I do it is to take a quarter of the dough at a time. I flatten it with my hand to get it as thin as possible and feed it through at the "1" setting. I fold it over and run it through again. Repeat for 3 or 4 times to get it nice and smooth. Than run it through the "2" setting, then the "3", etc. all the way up to "5" or "6". The first batch this time I ended at 6, but thought it was bit thin.

[bholus10]

Step 4:

Anyway, a quarter of the dough ends up like this: