The most delicious Italian cannoli: simple recipes

Italians are rightfully proud of their own cuisine, because over its long history it has brought the world a huge number of delicious dishes. We all love pizza and pasta, which originate from Italy. But not much is known about Italian sweets, although they are certainly worthy of attention.

Origin story
How to choose ingredients?
Recipes
Classic Sicilian
With ricotta insides
Chocolate in the oven
Video
How and with what to serve?
Useful tips for making

Origin story

Cannoli is a common Italian dessert originating from Sicily. It is a wafer tube with curd insides . The word canolli itself is translated from Italian as “small tube”. The dessert may vary in size depending on the traditions of the region. It can be either the size of a finger or the size of a large fist.

At first, the cakes were sold at fairs and Italian carnivals. At the moment, this sweetness is sold at any stage, and it is consumed both during holidays and on weekdays . Italians consider this dessert a winter dessert because its interior consists of milk products, which will quickly spoil when hot in the summer.

How to choose ingredients?

Recipes for cannoli with Sicilian cream and not only are usually not very complicated, although labor-intensive, and consist of ordinary ingredients . The dessert consists of wafer blanks and curd inside. The tubes are made from shortcrust pastry and can be prepared either in the oven or deep-fried. The main thing is that the waffles come out crispy.

Because cakes are usually prepared with alcohol, it is not recommended to give them to children. If desired, the alcohol component can be replaced with milk . In Italy, the sale of ready-made wafer rolls for this dessert is very widespread.

If we talk about the filling, it should be noted that the most delicate cakes are made from Mascarpone cheese . This particular option is common in Sicily. There are also recipes with ricotta cheese, cottage cheese, and cream. You can add sugar to the filling, but for the most tender taste, it is better to choose sweet powder.

The preparations for this sweet for us are formed using special molds. , wood sticks are used for this . But since we rarely prepare this dessert, then, most likely, you won’t have such forms on hand.

Recipes

There are a huge number of Italian cannoli recipes. They differ in the method of production and creams . In addition to sweet versions of this sweet, you can even find cannoli stuffed with meat. But the most delicious are the cakes made from the classic Sicilian recipe.

Classic Sicilian

Ingredients for waffles:

2 cups wheat flour;

30 ml olive oil;

750 ml vegetable oil for deep frying.

Ingredients for cream:

75 g sweet powder;

How to cook:

1. To make straws, mix flour, cocoa, cinnamon, salt, butter and egg.

2. Add wine and vinegar to the consistency. The resulting mass must be elastic . Place it in the cold for at least half an hour, and preferably for 2 hours. While the dough is resting, you can prepare the filling.

3. Whisk Mascarpone with powder, add liqueur. Orange liqueur is ideal here , but you can use the one you have at home.

4. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and roll it out. The thickness should be approximately 2 mm. Cut it into 7 cm squares.

5. Wrap the purchased pieces around the molds. Deep fry for approximately 2 minutes. Place the tubes on a paper napkin or towel . This is necessary so that excess fat drains from them.

6. Fill the finished waffles with cream using a pastry syringe or spoon. Decorate with nuts, candied fruits, grated chocolate or syrups.

With ricotta insides

Ingredients for preparations:

50 g butter;

65 ml snow-white dessert wine;

For cream:

250 g sweet powder;

grated chocolate, candied fruits.

What needs to be created:

1. Mix flour, egg, sugar, cinnamon, soda. Add butter cut into small pieces and grind into crumbs. Add wine and vinegar. You can add a spoonful of water as needed. The dough should be dense . It must be refrigerated for two hours.

2. To make the cream, you need to beat the ricotta cheese with powder. drain the excess liquid from the ricotta in advance and mash it a little with a fork. Then add grated chocolate and candied fruits. Place in the refrigerator.

3. Roll out the finished dough on a surface sprinkled with flour or sweet powder. Its thickness should be about 2 mm. Then cut it into 10x10 cm squares .

Chocolate in the oven

Ingredients for preparations:

Cannoli with ricotta

Cannoli is the most recognizable Sicilian dessert. A crispy waffle tube filled with cheese and syrup. Most often, ricotta, mascarpone, light cottage cheese with the addition of syrup, liqueur or flavored water are used as the cheese interior. The size of the dessert can vary widely depending on the traditions and wishes of the pastry chef.

In the districts of Palermo they prepare large cannoli, the size of a huge apple. In Sicily, this dessert is very widespread and very respected. It is customary to serve dessert at a festive table, often at Christmas and New Year. Outside of Italy, such desserts are very common in the United States (the United States of America is a country in North America) , like cheesecake - a recipe brought by Italian emigrants, which not only caught on, but became uniquely popular.

The base of the dessert is a wafer roll. It is generally accepted that waffles are a type of dry cookie with a beautiful cellular pattern on its surface, left by a baking stamp. The usual dough is flour, eggs, sugar and milk. Sicilian cannoli can be prepared either using “ordinary” waffle rolls, they are produced by the factory method, or with unique waffle rolls prepared according to a special recipe.

It is striking that the first mention of cannoli appeared in old texts, which describe “tubes of dough, curled in the shape of a torch and filled with blancmange.” In general, there are plenty of stories and versions of the origin of the dessert. A fascinating version is that the prototype originated in the Sultan's harems, where ladies prepared sweets from crispy dough, cottage cheese, almonds and honey. And the recipe ended up in a Christian monastery in Sicily, where they began to prepare the dessert for carnivals.

In Sicily, ricotta is usually used for the interior. Formally, ricotta is not a cheese, but rather a milk product, which is prepared not from milk, but from whey, which remains after the production of mozzarella or other cheeses. What remains in ricotta is not the milk protein - casein, but lactalbumin.

There is one subtlety when filling waffle rolls with ricotta. Wet ricotta quickly leads to soggy tubes. Therefore, you need to either fill the insides with cannoli just before eating, or take constructive measures to isolate the insides from the dough - for example, lining the inner surface of the wafer blanks with chocolate.

Ingredients for cannoli

Wheat flour 1.5 cup (195 g)
Ricotta 250 g
Egg 4 pcs
Butter 2 tbsp. l.
Snow white wine 50 ml
Sweet powder 150 g
Condensed milk 3-4 tbsp. l.
Vegetable oil for deep frying 1 l
Orange 1 piece
Brown sugar 1 tbsp. l.
Snow white sugar 4 tbsp. l.
Liqueur 2 tbsp. l.
Vanillin, salt, cinnamon sticks Spices

How to make cannoli

In making a dessert with ricotta, preparing the dough for the wafer rolls and the insides are two independent processes. In general, I advise you not to be lazy and prepare a little candied candied orange. It doesn’t take much time and ultimately diversifies the taste and appearance.
Sift 1 cup of wheat flour and mix it in a deep bowl with the contents of 1 egg, 1 tbsp. l. sugar, vanilla (extract or powder), 50 ml snow-white wine, 1 tbsp. l. melted (but not heated) butter and a pinch of salt.

Mix flour and everything you need for the dough

Using a mixer, knead the dough

Roll the dough into a ball and put it in the refrigerator

Cut the orange zest into strips, divide the orange into slices

Prepare the candied orange

Roll out the dough with a rolling pin on the table to 2 mm

Squeeze out a round piece with a cup or cut out a circle

Straw mandrel

Wrap the dough around the mandrel, carefully sealing the edges

Blanks before hot

Dip the prepared mandrel with dough into hot oil

When the color of the dough turns golden, remove the waffle tube from the fryer.

Place the tubes on a sieve or mesh

Canolli - Italian sweets recipe

Canolli are the most delicious wafer rolls with tender cream, the recipe of which comes from Sicily. They are prepared deep-fried or in the oven. To obtain the shape of the tubes, the shortbread dough is rolled into flat cakes, which are wrapped around special iron tubes. On such devices the base is baked or fried in a large amount of oil.

The usual recipe with delicious photos of crispy cannoli

The dough contains alcohol, so it is better not to give this treat to children. If you want the whole family, young and old, to enjoy the Sicilian dessert, you can exchange the wine for milk.

What we take:

wheat flour – 1.5 tbsp;
cocoa (if desired) - 3 tbsp. l;
butter – 80 g;
baking powder – 1 tsp;
salt – 1/3 tsp;
sugar – 2 tbsp. l;
snow white wine – 1 tbsp.

How to prepare dough for cannoli

Melt the butter in the microwave.

Sift the flour with cocoa and baking powder into a separate container.

Cocoa is added to the dough if desired. You can make straws without it.

Mix the dry ingredients with wine, melted butter, sugar and salt.

Knead the dough, roll it into a ball and, wrapping it in cling film, place it in the refrigerator for 60 minutes.

Forming cannoli according to an authentic recipe

Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Dust the work surface with flour and roll out the base into a layer 3-4 mm wide. Using a glass or mug, cut out circles 10 cm in diameter. You can cut the dough into 8 cm squares.

We wind each flat cake (or square) onto a special iron tube, having previously lubricated it with oil.

Advice

In the absence of a device, you can create it yourself. To do this, cut out circles with a diameter of 12 cm from thick paper. Wrap them in foil and roll them into rolls. We tie it with thread in 2 places. Here are the tubes for shaping Sicilian waffles in the Russian style.
You can roll up little balls from thick paper.

Bake the pieces at 180 degrees for 25-30 minutes in a previously preheated oven.

Can. As already mentioned. Deep fry the cannoli.

Let cool and fill with cream.

Tender cream for savory canolli according to a traditional recipe

What we take:

curd cheese – 500 g;
chicken eggs – 2 pcs.;
sweet powder – 150 g;
rum – 1 tbsp. l;
chocolate (snow-white/black – optional) – 100 g;
milk – 3 tbsp. l;
cream 33% – 100 ml;
candied fruits – 50 g.

Part 1. Using a mixer, beat mascarpone or ricotta with sweet powder.

Add rum and cream. Beat again. Cover with film and place in the refrigerator for half an hour. The delicious cannoli cream recipe comes out unusual and airy. But you will have to tinker a little with its production.

Curd cheeses make very tasty creams for cakes and pastries.

Part 2. Wash the chicken eggs with laundry soap. Separate the yolks from the whites so that no water, part of the yolk, or fat gets into the whites.

The dishes where the whites will be placed must be dry and completely unstained. Only if these rules are followed can you beat the whites to stable peaks.

Beat the whites with a mixer until stiff peaks form. When you turn over the container in which they were whipped, the mass will not creep or fall out. When you can achieve such a mixture, you can proceed to the final step of making cannoli cream according to the Sicilian recipe.

Part 3. Remove the creamy cheese mass from the refrigerator, combine it with the whipped egg whites in several steps and introduce the outer ones into the mixture.

Gently fold in the whites with a spatula, folding them in one direction from bottom to top. This is necessary so as not to lose the airiness of the mass. Cover again with cling film and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Assembling cannoli according to a delicious recipe

Melt the chocolate broken into pieces in a water bath and mix it with milk. Dip the ends of the cooled tubes into the resulting glaze.

Cannolly design options:

dip the chocolate ends into wafer or nut crumbs;
delicious with coconut flakes;
chocolate can be bitter or milky, snow-white or dark.

Once you have decided on the appearance of the tubes, you can fill them with cream. To do this, place it in a syringe or a cooking bag and fill all the tubes.

Last year I vacationed in Sicily and brought back a recipe for the famous cannoli: my family is crazy about them

Last year, when I was traveling around Italy, I was able to spend a number of days on the famous peninsula of Sicily. It was here that I tried a dessert that really sunk into my soul - cannoli. Here you can actually meet them in any pastry shop. I couldn’t resist and asked the baker to share with me the traditional recipe, which I will talk about in this article for us.

Ingredients needed

Cannoli is perhaps the most popular sweet on the largest Italian island of Sicily. They are so tasty that they began to be prepared evenly throughout almost the entire region of Italy. With all this, the recipe is quite ordinary. True, it will take little time and dexterity to create a thin, crispy and non-greasy dough. But all the labor expended is more than worth it. Based on the recipe that I received during my own stay in Sicily, I take the following ingredients to make cannoli:

250 g flour;
1 testicle;
15 g cocoa;
a pinch of salt;
50 g butter;
35 g sugar;
4 table. spoons of dry snow-white wine;
1 beaten egg white;
sunflower oil for deep frying.

In addition to the inside of my cannoli, I choose the following ingredients:

250 g ricotta;
60 g sugar;
chocolate chips for decoration.

Making the dough

Following the instructions written in the recipe of the cook from Sicily, I follow the steps below when making the dough for my dessert:

1. The other night I place the ricotta in a fine sieve with a bowl underneath. Then I cover it with film and leave it in the refrigerator. This will help me get rid of any excess water that may be in the cheese.

2. I place the sifted flour, cocoa and salt in a bowl. I put butter, sugar, and a previously beaten egg in the center and pour in the wine. Then I stir these ingredients until they completely merge into a homogeneous dough.

3. I knead my dough on a floured countertop for 5 minutes. Then I wrap it in film and leave it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Once the dough has cooled, I knead it for a few more minutes to soften it slightly.

Making cannoli

I divide the purchased dough into 3 parts. I cover two pieces of dough with film and work with the rest. I knead it lightly until it becomes pliable, and roll it out thinly.

Once the dough becomes smooth and narrow, I cut out circles of about 10 cm in diameter from it. I still roll them out a little to get an oval shape.

Then I grease the molds (iron tubes) and cover them with dough. I cover the top of the dough with beaten egg white. I heat a lot of sunflower oil in a saucepan. Once it reaches a temperature of 180 degrees, I immerse the cannoli in oil and fry them until golden brown. When frying, I put only one or two tubes into the deep fat at a time and at the same time make sure that they do not touch. Otherwise, nothing will work out for me.

I place the finished cannoli on paper towels to get rid of excess fat. Then I remove it from the mold with careful movements so as not to break the fragile tubes of dough.

Making the insides of the cannoli

For the previously drained ricotta, I mix it with sugar for the inside. Then I place this mixture in a pastry bag and completely fill the inside of the cannoli with cream. I do this right before serving so that the inside does not have time to soften the crispy dough. I top my dessert with a small amount of chocolate chips.

By the way, cannoli are not bad because you can quietly experiment with their insides. For example, you can add the freshest berries or nuts to ricotta - then the dessert will get the freshest taste. But, in my opinion, the usual Sicilian recipe, although quite ordinary, is more successful.