Cannoli Florentine
Source of Recipe
"An Italian Family Reunion Cookbook" by Gail Sforza Brewer
Pastry:
2 tablespoons lard
1/3 cup confectioners' sugar
1/8 tsp salt
3 egg yolks
1 whole egg
4 ounces dry white wine
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 1/2 cups pastry flour
1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1 egg white, slightly beaten
Lard for deep-frying
Confectioners sugar
Cream lard and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add salt. In a separate bowl, combine egg yolks, whole egg, wine, and olive oil. Stir liquid mixture into sugar mixture. Sift the flours together in a third bowl, then stir into liquid mixture. Combine thoroughly. Brush on a thin coating of olive oil to prevent a crust from forming, then cover bowl and refrigerate for one hour.
Turn out on a lightly floured surface and form into a sausage-shaped roll with your hands. Cut the roll into rounds approximately 1/2 inch thick, weighing slightly under one ounce. With a rolling pin, shape each round into an oval no thicker than 1/8 inch. Wrap dough loosely around cannoli forms.(aluminum tubes or wooden sticks, 6" x 3/4"). The pastry puffs as it cooks, so don't worry if yours is very thin as you wrap it. You want the shells to be crunchy and flaky, not thick and chewy. Seal edges of the dough with egg white. Have a complete batch of forms wrapped before you begin to fry as the process moves speedily.
In a deep saucepan or electric deep fryer, heat the lard to 360*. It should be deep enough to permit cannoli forms to float without touching the bottom of the pan. Fry only as many pastries at one time as can float without touching one another. Overcrowding makes it likely that some pastries will be unevenly cooked---an unnecessary disappointment. Turn pastries several times as they fry so they brown evenly. Remove from deep fryer with tongs when pastries are golden brown. Drain on paper toweling. After the cannoli shells have cooled for approximately 5 minutes, gently push the forms through and out of the shells to assist with cooling all the way through. Do not attempt to fill the shells until they are completely cooled.
Filling:
1 pound pastry ricotta (see below)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract or
1tablespoon lemon extract
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
4 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely shaves (optional)
Pastry ricotta is much drier than regular. To use regular ricotta in this recipe, place in a fine cheesecloth bag or in a very fine sieve and let drain at least three hours before combining with other ingredients. In a medium-sized bowl, add vanilla or lemon extract and sugar to ricotta, stirring gently until well combined. If desired, add chocolate curls to vanilla-flavored ricotta. It will color the entire filling to a light brown tone. Some people also add candied fruits, but we prefer to let the flavor of the ricotta stand out. Fill canolli shells by spooning ricotta mixture inside (a long handled iced tea spoon is very helpful, but a table knife also works well). Sprinkle lightly wit h a powdered sugar.
Makes 18 cannoli.
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