Cannoli Recipe

If you love cannoli and have always wanted to make them at home, then this video's for you. And if you like this recipe, don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe. Hey, you're watching Preppy Kitchen, where I, John Kanell, teach you how to make delicious homemade dishes to share with your family and friends. First thing we're gonna do is drain the ricotta. You don't wanna have a lot of liquid making your cannoli mushy. You want it to be really crisp on the outside. I'm using a cheesecloth with a strainer to get all the excess water out of this. If you don't have that, you can spread this out on a counter with paper towels and blot it dry. I'm wrapping this in my cheesecloth over the strainer, and I'm gonna leave it in the fridge for a few hours. At the end of this recipe, we're gonna come back to it, and you'll see all the liquid that's drained out of here. So into the fridge you go. While our ricotta's draining, we can make our cannoli dough. This has a similar texture to pasta dough once it's done, so just be aware of that. It's not like you're making cake batter. Two cups of all-purpose flour into the bowl of my food processor, but you don't have to use a food processor. You could do this by hand. 1 1⁄4 teaspoon of salt, and two tablespoons of granulated sugar. We're gonna whiz this up to combine the ingredients, and pulse to combine. There we go. Right, after your dry ingredients are combined, we're gonna add two tablespoons of unsalted butter that's been cut into little cubes. Pulse once more. You wanna have a rough, crumbly mixture. That's good. Now we need two egg yolks. I'm reserving the whites for later, although I don't need all of them. The yolks are gonna go in right now. After the two yolks go into your food processor, I wanna take a quick break and talk to you about the marsala that's added to this. Marsala is the traditional liquid that you're adding. It's a fortified wine, and when you fry the cannoli, it's the marsala that's gonna cause it to bubble up and have that characteristic light, crisp texture. I'm using half of a cup, but if you do not have marsala at home, which I understand, you could use a dry wine and add in a tablespoon of brandy or another liqueur to help strengthen it, and if you're not gonna have any alcohol in this, you can go ahead and use white grape juice that you're adding about a tablespoon of vinegar to. That'll give a similar flavor, and the vinegar will still cause it to bubble up. Let's pulse until we get a mixture that starts coming together. If you can see, oh my gosh, it smells so good. It looks like a wet pastry dough right now. This is not what we want. We wanna have something more like a pasta dough where it's silky and smooth. This means we're gonna have to knead it. Lightly flour your surface. We're gonna knead it for maybe five to 10 minutes until it's nice and silky smooth, and now let's bring it together, and you can see it's really like a motley rough dough, so we're just going to wake up that gluten. So we're gonna knead this for five to 10 minutes until it's nice and smooth. It might be a little bit less. It might be a little bit more, probably a little bit less. As you can see, our dough is so much smoother now. If you press in, it bounces back. This means that it is ready to rest. It's gone through a lot. It needs time to relax, so cover with plastic, leave it out on the counter for one hour to two. If you're doing it overnight, just let it rest in the fridge for that long, and then let it come back to room temperature. Our dough rested for about two hours. I had a nice lunch and hung out with the kids, and I wish you could feel it because it's totally different now. It's so much more relaxed. You're gonna wanna get a big pot out and add your vegetable oil or whatever you're frying in. Also have your thermometer out and ready because we'll be using it when we start frying. I'm gonna divide my dough into two batches. It'll make it much easier to roll. If you have a pasta maker at home, this is a great time to use it because the pasta maker will give you really, really thin sheets. Let's lightly flour our surface just a little bit, and now we're gonna start rolling it out. And cannoli dough can be a little bit frustrating just because it's stretchy. It's gonna be bouncing around here and there, and you have to be kind of patient with it. I think the easiest way to roll this is into one long strip because we're gonna cut about 3 1⁄2 to 4-inch-sized circles out of this dough. This is my circle cutter. I'm just making sure that my dough is wide enough, and it totally is. I'm gonna cut one circle out and just show you how it happens so you're not surprised. Circle number one. You're like, oh my gosh, what is this nonsense? It really shrank back into an oblong shape, but that's okay because you can take your cannoli form and then stretch it over the cannoli form. It's gonna hold it in place. Dip your finger in the egg whites that you reserved and brush a little bit over the top, and then overlap that. This is the glue that will hold your cannoli together. If it's not properly fixed to the form, you're gonna have basically like a pop-a-dum. It's gonna be a little puffy circle pastry thing that's not useful at all for filling. These cannoli shells can be a little tricky, so you really need things like the cannoli form to make them. I put a link in my description in case you wanna pick some up. It makes it much easier. Press down, and that's perfect. We are ready to have these deep fried, so let's check our oil temperature. Your oil should be over medium heat until it reaches 375, and then you're gonna baby it a little bit, so maybe decrease, maybe increase, and as you add your cannoli in, it will drop the temperature. You can add up to six cannoli at a time, but unless you're an expert deep fryer, I do not suggest that. I would go with groups of three. I love that right away I can see all the bubbles forming, and that is the signature look of a cannoli. Those little tiny bubbles add a lot of crispiness and just say, hey, this is a delicious cannoli. They really don't need very much time at all to fry up. Maybe about a minute or so. Keep an eye on them. Move them around, and you're looking for a nice golden color. Okay, once you have a golden brown color, drain some of that oil off. Place them onto a wire rack covered in paper towels. Now, you don't want your cannoli to get stuck to the form, so either using oven mitts or a lot of paper towels, and use the tongs to remove the form. My first batch is just about done. As you go off, just remove them from the form and place them onto your paper towels. My cannoli are cooling, so let's get to the filling. I'm gonna make this two different ways, and I just wanna show you how much water is coming off of this ricotta. It's crazy. We're gonna transfer this into a clean bowl. Now, a much more dry ricotta. To my strained 32 ounces of ricotta, I'm adding a little bit less than one cup of powdered sugar. Work it in. It's not gonna be light and fluffy. You're just mixing the sugar in. I'm adding one teaspoon of vanilla along with 1 1⁄4 teaspoon of cinnamon. These are very traditional filling flavors, and if you want, you could definitely make it your own by adding brandy, rum. You don't have to use ricotta if you don't want to. You can use mascarpone. You could use a whipped cream filling, anything you want. It's still gonna be delicious. Once your mixture's smooth, you're ready to add the other components of your filling. I'm doing this two separate ways, so I'm gonna reserve a little bit of my filling in a smaller bowl. If you're doing all one flavor, try adding in 1⁄3 of a cup of chopped chocolate or chopped pistachios to start and then go from there. I love chocolate in any form, but for me personally, I feel like it can be a little powerful with the very subtle flavors of the ricotta and the marsala that comes through in the shells. So for me, it's gonna be the pistachios, and a traditional offering is also to add in candied fruits as well. And now we're ready to fill our cooled cannoli shells. Fill them all the way through, and to finish them off, just for a little flourish, you can either dip them in mini chocolate chips or some more chopped chocolate, and that'll look really divine. Keep going, and we're also gonna do the same thing for the pistachios as well. And I hope you can see there's all these bubbles around here. That is the signature look of a cannoli. It's gonna really just melt in your mouth in a blaze of crunchiness. If you love this recipe, check out my Italian playlist. That was a crunchy, creamy dream, and the flavors are on point. I'll see you in the next video.