Cannoli for Artsy (and lazy) Soul
When brainstorming what kind of dish should be based on Shir Gartenberg, she expressed her desire for it to be a cream filled desert. Besides the dirty connotation that immediately comes to mind, of her wanting to be "cream filled", she really is quite creamy on the inside once you get to know her. But she can also be a hard-ass on the outside. Which meant the desert should be hard on the outside and creamy on the inside. And long. I wanted it to be as long and possible, for Shir's physical features. Long and thin and covered in tattoos.
The one desert that had the chance to match all of our requirements was the cannoli. AND it's Italian, which I love and just came back from, and Shir apparently loves Italy too. It's a win win for everybody.
One problem though... I am afraid of working with dough. I would have never considered making cannoli at home if it wasn't for Shir. And it almost didn't happen. Shir threatened to close her account on the non-prudent social network a few months back, but lucky for all of us changed her mind at the last moment.
Another problem was that you need special metal rods to make cannoli. The dough is supposed to be wrapped around the rods and lowered into boiling oil. I don't happen to own a set of such rods, so I started to search for one on Amazon and local cooking stores.
Then I unintentionally came upon a hack that would spare me the wait for the rods and time in the kitchen losing my temper with the dough. The hack is to use Cannelloni instead of making your own tubes. The cannelloni should be cooked in sweet boiling water for 30 seconds and after drying completely it is ready to go into the boiling oil for 1 minute or until you start seeing little bubbles on the dough. Then take the cannelloni out and let them cool on paper towels. You can even skip the sweet water part, its purpose is to add sweetness to the cannelloni dough which doesn't contain sugar at all.
This hack is also good for my purposes, because the cannelloni are longer than hand-made cannoli would have been. This way they can simulate Shir's long fingers, and the surface allows me to draw "tattoos" on them.
The only thing left to make is the cream filling.
Ingredients:
500 gr Whipping Cream
250 gr Mascarpone
100 gr Granulated Sugar or Sugar Powder
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Just throw all of them into the mixer and beat until you reach cream consistency.
The hardest part for me was putting the cream into a pastry bag and infuse it into the cannoli shells. So I let someone else do it for me :)
For the final touch, I melted dark chocolate in a bowl and dipped in it the both ends of the filled cannoli. Dipping in crushed pistachios also works.
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