I’ve never tasted the real thing, but as Paul Hollywood visited Palermo with a camera and munched on some cannoli, I knew the time has come to try and make them. Florek has ordered the special tubes for me a few weeks ago, so yesterday, instead of maybe colouring some eggs for Easter, I started with the cannoli. What a freaking project that was.

I used the recipe from mojewypieki, had a bit of read around a look at youtube, did my research. Husband Florek took Izzie for a walk and I got to work.

In the bowl of kitchen aid I put 250 g of plain flour, a pinch of salt, a pinch of cinnamon, 1 tsp of cocoa, 1 egg yolk, 20 g of icing sugar, 30 g of soft butter and 5 tbsps of vodka- the original recipe calls for Marsala, I had none and Bea told me to use vodka.  There is no mention of using any water to bind the pastry, I found it necessary.

I ended up with seriously thick dough, that rested for an hour and still rolling it out was a very ungrateful job. I got our old, crappy pasta machine out, immediately remembered why it’s so crappy, swore at the whole thing some more and was 5 minutes away from chucking the whole cannoli idea in the bin. And then Husband came home, approached the pasta machine with calm and patience and rolled it all for me nice and thinly. Shortly speaking- he saved the day.

The dough was cut out with a cookie cutter, folded around the tubes, stuck on top with egg white and fried in 180 degrees till brownish. After about a minute each cannolo had to be removed from the tube and put back in the oil. All easy to do, when one person rolls out the pastry, the other does the frying.

Once cooled, I piped the filling made of ricotta, which I drained off on the sieve for about an hour, mixed with some whipped cream, lemon curd and icing sugar. Flavoured and sweetened to taste the way I liked it. Finished off with raspberries, crushed pistachios and icing sugar.

Absolute revelation.

And this morning Florek ordered a new shiny pasta machine. :-)h