Day 39 - Mini Cannoli Cups

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Today I made yet another recipe I found on Pinterest.com. The recipe is for Mini Cannoli's and it originates from a blog called "Cooking with Sugar." I have always loved cannoli's and have always wanted to try making them, but they seem really intimidating, having to fry the shells and all. This recipe is a lighter version with baked shells and I felt it was something I could definitely tackle.

The recipe really only had 3 simple steps. The first is making the cream filling which consists of ricotta cheese, sugar [both confectioners and white], vanilla extract, and mini chocolate chips. Everything gets mixed together in a stand mixer [except the chocolate chips] until a thick, smooth mixture forms. It is then put in the refrigerator until the shells are ready to be filled.

Ingredients ready to be mixed

Almost ready!

Ricotta mixture ready for the fridge

The second step is making the shells. The ingredients needed for this are as follows: a frozen pie crust, course natural sugar [turbinado], and cinnamon. All you do is roll out the pre-made pie crust, sprinkle it with the turbinado sugar and cinnamon, and roll over the crust with a rolling pin to press the sugar and cinnamon into the dough. Small circles are cut out of the dough and pressed it into my mini muffin tin to create small cups. These bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes and they are ready.

Finished cannoli shells 

I didn't actually fill the shells until we were ready to sample them after dinner that evening. If the shells are filled to early, they will get soggy, so it's best to wait to fill them until you are ready to eat!

When I was ready to assemble the cannoli's, I filled a pipping bag with the cream and pipped a dollop of cream into each shell and then topped them with the mini chocolate chips. Another way to do this is to mix the chocolate chips into the cream before you fill the pipping bag, this way there are chocolate chips running through the whole center - you can't go wrong either way.

Finished Cannoli's!

The cannoli's were really good. Although they are made differently than traditional cannoli's, you definitely get the flavor and essence of a cannoli in much less time and with much less work!

Stay tuned until next week :)

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