Daring Bakers: Cannoli

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..

Mise en place...

Making and prepping the dough

Allowing the ball of dough to rest in the refrigerator before rolling out circles

Since I am a linguist-in-training, I thought I would discuss the word “cannoli” to you all before going into what I did for this challenge: As the intro states, the word “cannoli” is the plural form of “cannolo” because it has the plural marker “i” at the end of the word. So, saying or writing “cannoli” with an “s” is repetitive (and incorrect). In fact, the “s” is not a plural marker in Italian, and you never see the letter at the end of Italian words unless it is a borrowed from another language (not applicable to all borrowed words).

Rolling out the dough

Also, “ricotta” is pronounced “ree-COAT-tah” (pronunciation breakdown based on U.S. English phonology), not “ree-CAH-duh”. Lastly, “mascarpone” is pronounced “mah-skar-POE-neh”, not “mah-skar-pone”. In Italian and many other Romance languages, most of the vowels are pure and monosyllabic. Also, each syllable is pronounced. Okay, now that we got the language lesson out the way (haha), here is what I did for the challenge:

Rolling the circles and getting out the egg whites for the tips of the circles...

Rolling the dough around the forms...

Frying the cannoli!

Ecco i cannoli senza ripieno. Here are the cannoli sans filling.

The two cannoli at the bottom were dipped in milk chocolate and chocolate chips. The cannolo at the top was dipped in toffee bits. All three had the mascarpone filling.

I’m not a fan of frying food, but I was still happy about this challenge because I’ve never tasted cannoli before because of my aversion to ricotta and its sour taste. When I read that we could use mascarpone, I felt more comfortable about going through with this challenge. As an added challenge, I made homemade mascarpone, and it was super easy to make! It came out so creamy.

Thank you, Lisa Michelle, for this challenge! Don't forget to check out what the other Daring Bakers have done!

Mascarpone Filling

adapted from Recipes 5000

• 2 containers or 8 ounces of homemade mascarpone cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
  
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter

Beat mascarpone until smooth. Add in the rest of the ingredients. Transfer to a pastry bag with a 1/2-inch star or plain tip. Pipe into the cannoli.