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Homemade Cannoli Will Beat Out Your Favorite Bakery
Delish
Follow
5/9/2024
With a rich creamy ricotta filling and a crisp exterior, these homemade cannolis are the perfect treat-yourself dessert.
Category
🛠️
Lifestyle
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
Hey everyone, it's Frankie in the Delish Kitchen studios.
00:03
I'm making one of my favorite desserts, the cannoli.
00:07
And I grew up making cannolis at an Italian bakery.
00:10
I got to learn how to make the dough, the cream.
00:12
I filled them all the time.
00:15
I can't wait to show you how to make them.
00:16
We're using Calabro ricotta cheese.
00:19
It's whole milk, and we are going to be straining it
00:22
so that we can release some of the extra moisture
00:24
that comes in the package with it.
00:26
Typically, you would use a ricotta and pastata,
00:29
but since you can't really find it,
00:30
and if you do find it, it's pretty expensive.
00:33
You have to kind of mimic it at home and make it yourself.
00:36
Ricotta and pastata is a drier form of ricotta cheese.
00:39
You would use ricotta and pastata because it's thicker
00:42
and it results in a thicker cannoli cream.
00:44
If you've ever had cannoli cream,
00:45
you know exactly what I'm talking about.
00:47
You have a bowl and a fine mesh strainer over the bowl.
00:50
And you're gonna dump the ricotta right into the bowl.
00:54
Make sure you get everything out.
00:56
And this is going to help drain all of that liquid
01:01
out of the ricotta, and it's a very slow process.
01:04
This is gonna take about an hour,
01:06
or you can drain it up to overnight.
01:07
It really depends on how thick you want it to be.
01:10
Cannoli dough is very similar to a pie dough.
01:14
And so to a bowl, we're going to add our flour,
01:18
our sugar, a little bit of cinnamon, a pinch of salt.
01:22
We'll cut in or use our fingers to fold in the butter.
01:27
Just like you would a pie crust,
01:28
I'm breaking up the butter into these little pea-sized
01:31
pieces so that it creates a really good flakiness
01:34
to the shell.
01:35
We're gonna add our scrambled egg in first.
01:38
That's our binder, our protein source.
01:41
And then I'm gonna add the wine.
01:42
And the wine is the acid that is going to create
01:45
those flaky layers.
01:47
And it's also going to help cut any gluten.
01:50
So if I overmix this too much,
01:51
we'll have the acid in there that's gonna help
01:53
keep the dough nice and tender.
01:54
Wine is usually added because there's a lot of flavor in it.
01:57
And typically you would use a Marsala wine,
02:00
but a lot of people use white wine, and that's fine too.
02:02
Since we have a lot of sugar already in this recipe,
02:05
the white wine balances out.
02:07
It's nice and dry.
02:08
So when you're almost there,
02:09
you're gonna have this shaggy dough.
02:10
It's gonna be very floury,
02:12
so you'll use your hand to kind of bunch it together
02:14
in the bowl.
02:14
Then you're gonna pour it out onto a cutting board,
02:16
and I'll continue to form it into a round, flat disc.
02:20
I'm gonna wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge
02:22
so that it sets for about an hour.
02:24
That will make it a lot easier for rolling and cutting.
02:28
Now we get to make the filling, my favorite part.
02:30
The ricotta and pastata has drained,
02:32
so we'll add that into the bowl.
02:34
And that's gonna get mixed in with mascarpone.
02:36
I'm gonna add mascarpone to this
02:37
because it helps make the mixture really creamy and rich.
02:41
Gonna use powdered sugar, a little bit of cinnamon,
02:44
orange zest, vanilla, and salt.
02:48
Citrus zest, it helps brighten the rich,
02:50
creamy flavor of the cannoli cream.
02:53
I love using cinnamon.
02:54
Cinnamon's a classic flavor in cannoli.
02:56
You put it in the shells,
02:57
and you put it in the cream usually,
02:59
so it balances out the flavor.
03:01
If you find that your mixture's a little too thick,
03:03
then you can always add more whole milk ricotta unstrained.
03:07
So you'll be able to tell when this is done
03:09
when the ricotta can hold its shape
03:11
at the end of your beaters or your spatula.
03:14
It should be really dense and pipeable.
03:17
Got my cannoli dough.
03:18
Gonna bring it over to my board,
03:20
and we're gonna roll it out to an eighth of an inch thick.
03:23
After you place down your bench flour,
03:24
which helps the sticking,
03:26
I create a star shape almost with my rolling pin
03:30
so that it helps create these little individual sections
03:33
on the dough so that as I'm rolling,
03:35
I could turn and roll,
03:37
and it's kind of like a guide for myself
03:40
as I'm pushing the dough out on the board.
03:43
It also helps make it even.
03:45
When I worked at the Italian bakery,
03:46
the head baker, Frank, taught me how to roll out dough,
03:49
and he used to say the dough was walking,
03:52
which means that it's just not sticking to the board
03:55
and that it's actually moving, like this.
03:57
Going to cut out my perfect little circles,
04:02
and they're going to be a little big,
04:05
which is okay because when they fry,
04:08
the dough is gonna constrict a little bit.
04:10
I'm using a metal cannoli shell,
04:14
and it kind of even looks like a metal cannoli,
04:16
which you could buy off of Amazon,
04:18
and if you don't have metal, you could use wooden dowels,
04:20
but this is really the only way
04:22
you're gonna be able to get this shape.
04:23
There's really no hack to it.
04:25
You just have to do it right.
04:26
So I'm gonna wrap the dough around the mold.
04:29
I'm gonna take a little bit of my egg white,
04:30
and I'm going to just dot the top part of the semicircle,
04:37
and I'm gonna fold it over,
04:38
and you could do this on the surface too,
04:41
which is a little more helpful,
04:42
and you're gonna gently press.
04:43
You don't wanna create finger marks on it.
04:46
It'll seal.
04:47
We're gonna get ready to fry the cannoli,
04:48
which is the best-smelling part of the entire process.
04:51
The oil should be at 350 degrees.
04:53
Typically, when you start,
04:55
you should have the oil be 10 degrees higher
04:57
than the recommended amount
04:58
because when you add the food into the oil,
05:01
it's gonna drop the temperature dramatically,
05:04
and it's gonna get you right to that sweet spot,
05:06
your 350 degrees.
05:08
I'm gonna gently put the cannoli
05:09
into the hot oil with tongs,
05:11
and my pot's pretty big,
05:13
so I'm gonna do four at a time,
05:14
and I'm gonna fry them until they're golden brown,
05:17
those little bubbles appear on the outside of the shell,
05:20
about four to six minutes.
05:22
Once they're cooked through, they look beautiful,
05:24
they're golden and crispy,
05:25
I'm going to take them out with a slotted spoon
05:27
or my tongs.
05:28
I'm gonna put them onto a sheet tray with a rack
05:31
so that they can cool.
05:32
Let these cool completely
05:33
before you even touch the metal.
05:35
It should be cold or room temperature,
05:38
and what you're gonna do
05:39
is you're going to gently,
05:41
because these are so delicate,
05:42
you're gonna gently twist the tube
05:45
and pull it out of the shell.
05:47
They're sturdy enough to where the shell shouldn't break,
05:50
but you also wanna still try to be as gentle as possible.
05:53
But that was perfect.
05:55
To fill the cannoli, you're gonna use a piping bag,
05:57
it's the easiest way to get into the center of the cannoli.
05:59
You're gonna take the cannoli in your one hand,
06:01
and you're gonna pipe it right in the center
06:04
on the one side out,
06:05
and then you're gonna turn it
06:07
and do the other side the same way.
06:09
You're gonna pipe two sides of the cannoli
06:11
so that you have more control
06:12
over how much filling goes into it.
06:14
Then I'm gonna sprinkle it with chocolate chips,
06:16
but you could also do some pistachio.
06:18
Some regions in Sicily,
06:19
you'll see people put candied orange peel.
06:22
Whatever you have on hand really works.
06:24
Chocolate chips are my favorite.
06:26
The iconic cannoli.
06:28
It is so important that you pipe the cream in the shell
06:33
right before you're gonna eat it.
06:34
If you see a pre-filled cannoli, do not eat it.
06:37
Okay.
06:39
Mm.
06:41
That crunch was everything.
06:44
So good.
06:46
And it's crispy, it's light and airy
06:48
kind of at the same time
06:49
because of all those little bubbles.
06:52
The cream is decadent.
06:54
All that mascarpone and that ricotta.
06:56
You might not think so much about the cannoli
06:58
when you see it at a party on a dessert platter,
07:00
but when you make it yourself, it is so special.
07:04
It's really nostalgic.
07:06
It is one of the best desserts in my opinion.
07:09
And what I love even more about it
07:11
is that you could dress it up to be an elegant dessert,
07:14
but you can also go into a local bakery
07:16
or make it at home and grab a cannoli
07:17
and take it on the go with you.
07:19
This is my favorite way to showcase Italian desserts.
07:22
So for more sweet treats just like this one,
07:24
stick around here at Delish.com.
Recommended
7:58
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