Cannoli

An Approachable Cannoli Recipe for Bakers of All Skill Levels!

Today we’re tackling homemade cannoli, completely from scratch. We’ll be making our own shells (no store-bought shells here), frying them (it’s easy, no deep fryer needed!) and filling them with a ricotta based filling. Let’s get started.

What You Need

For the Shells

A good cannoli should have shells that aren’t quite fragile, but that are thin and break easily beneath your teeth, giving way to a creamy ricotta-based filling that’s sweet, but not cloyingly so. Let’s talk about what we need for those thin, crisp shells, first:

Flour. Use all-purpose flour.Marsala wine. You can absolutely use a better quality of wine. While I often recommend against using cooking wine, the taste doesn’t really come through in the cannoli at the end and rather than waste a bottle of the expensive stuff, I just use cooking wine. This is a classic ingredient in Italian cannoli.White vinegar. This adds acidity to the dough and encourages a thinner dough with more of those beautiful thin bubbles that are characteristic to cannoli shells. It also helps the shells to break perfectly beneath your teeth when you take that first bite. Ground cinnamon. This adds a beautiful depth of flavor to the shells but may be omitted.Egg yolk. Just a single egg yolk (omit the white) adds a bit of fat and will help the dough to bind together. and a Tablespoon of butter. These add fat to the dough, just enough to give you the proper flakiness when you bite into it. Butter. It’s a small bit of butter in the grand scheme of things, but it helps encourage a thin and flaky shell.Sugar and salt primarily add flavor.Oil for frying. Vegetable oil and canola oil are good choices, peanut oil would work as well.

For Cannoli Filling

Ricotta cheese — Use whole milk ricotta cheese, or for an extra decadent treat try making your own ricotta! The ricotta must be strained before you can use it to make your filling or you’ll have a runny mess on your hands.Powdered sugar. My cannoli recipe is a tad bit sweeter than some. It’s not cloying, but I like to be able to taste a bit of sweetness!Vanilla extract. For flavor.Heavy cream. I use this to make homemade whipped cream which I then fold into the traditional ricotta/sugar/vanilla filling. This adds some lightness to the filling and I love it, I think you will too.

As always, this is just an overview of the ingredients used and why, please see the printable recipe below for detailed amounts and instructions.

How to Make Cannoli Shells

Start By Making Your Dough

Combine flour, sugar, salt, and cinnamon in the food processor, then briefly pulse in the butter until it’s incorporated and no large pieces remain. Add the egg yolk, wine, and vinegar and pulse until the dough is crumbly. Test the dough, you will know it has reached the proper consistency if you take about a teaspoon of the crumbly dough and if you pinch it between your thumb and forefinger it sticks together, as depicted in the photo above. Divide the dough into two. Working with one at a time, work the dough together until it forms a disc. Use pressure to work the dough together, make sure it is solid! Chill for a minimum of 30 minutes and up to several days.

Roll & Fry

After the dough has chilled, roll it out on a lightly floured surface. Roll it thin. Paper thin. As thin as you can possibly manage. Some people like to use a pasta maker to make theirs extra thin, but that’s not necessary here. While you’re doing all of this, you should have a pot of oil on medium heat, slowly heating to 375F (190C). Tip: Technically this recipe makes mini cannoli. If you want to make larger ones, simply buy classic cannoli tubes (click the link for my affiliate link) and cut the dough to be approximately 5″ (13cm) in diameter. Once the oil has reached temperature, fry the cannolis in batches of 2 or 3, until golden brown. Take care that you carefully place the cannolis in the oil and remove them with tongs, don’t burn yourself! Always allow the oil to return to the proper temperature before frying subsequent batches. Make sure your oil doesn’t get too hot, too!

Cannoli Filling

Cannoli filling is made with ricotta cheese. If you have the time to do so, I highly recommend you try making your own ricotta cheese. However, if you can’t, you can use store-bought whole milk ricotta but you must strain it first or your filling will be runny. I’ve included instructions in the recipe on how to strain ricotta (and I show how to do it in my video), do this the night before you intend to use it. I’ve found that the easiest way to fill cannoli is to portion the filling into a piping bag and pipe it into either side. Once filled, you can then dust the shells with powdered sugar and press or sprinkle the ends with mini chocolate chips or chocolate curls, sprinkles, sliced almonds, or chopped pistachios.