How to Make Oven Baked Cannoli
Here is an oven baked cannoli recipe for wonderfully cruchy cannoli shells instead of the traditional oil boiled version. They taste a little like caramel.
The thing is I really like Sicilian cannoli with a sweet ricotta filling, but I back off every time I see a recipe requiring deep fried or fat boiled pastry. Call it prejudice. Therefore I have been looking for other ways to prepare the shells, and an old special issue of La Cucina Italiana finally provided a solution. You simply bake the cannoli as a thin flat caramelized cookie and press it into shape while it’s still hot from the oven.
Next problem was that I did not have the metal cannoli forms needed for the moulding and I didn’t have a thin baking roll or unused broom handle either. All the available equipment was a couple of wooden spoons leading to burned fingers and some odd, clumsy, uneven shapes. Still they taste terrific, and I’m definitely going to make oven-baked cannoli again (when I’ve bought the proper tools).
Ingredients
For the cannoli
120 g (1½ dl) sugar
2 tbsp honey
60 g butter
50 ml cream
60 g (1 dl) flour
For the filling
250 g ricotta
150 g icing sugar (more or less according to personal preferences)
100 g dried apricots
50 g peeled almonds
100 g succade and candied orange peel
Preparation
Melt sugar, butter, honey and cream in a casserole and mix well.
Stir in the flour, gather all ingredients into a ball and remove the casserole from the heat.
Place 2-4 spoonfuls of the cannoli mixture on an oven plate covered with wax paper. Make sure to allow plenty of space around each spoonful, as the cookies float out while they are in the oven.
Bake at 180 C/350 F for 2-5 minutes until golden brown.
Let the cookies cool for two minutes, before folding them around a cannoli form.
Start over with the next batch – if all your shells are a success, there should be enough cannoli mixture for around 10 pieces.
Prepare the ricotta filling by chopping apricots and almonds finely.
Mix ricotta with icing sugar and stir in almond splits along with dried and candied fruit.
Pour the ricotta filling into a plastic kitchen bag, cut off a corner and use the bag to pipe filling into the shells.
Baked cannoli will keep fresh and crisp for at least two days in the fridge, but it is better to fill them immediately before serving..
More Sicilian favourites
like baked cannoli
Love cannoli. Have just made some using the candied fruit I made myself with a special fingered citron. Wonderful! Here’s recipe https://ambradambra.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/buddhas-hand-citron-lemon-with-a-twist/
Wow – never seen anything like that fingered citron. Wonder if it tastes a bit like cedra?