Daring with cannoli – 3 ways

I cannot believe it has been a month since my last post. November was hectic. Somehow, however I managed to give the cannoli a try. I do not like fried desserts, so I tried 3 baked shell versions: a vanilla tuille, a cocoa coffee tuile and phylo dough. For the fillings I chose: rose mousse for the vanilla tuilles, Kahlua rhum mascarpone cream and the clasic ricotta pistachio chocolate cream.

The mandatory line for this month:
“The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.”

Thank you Lisa for the wonderful challenge.

For the vanilla tuille shells

100 g butter
100 g powdered sugar
3 egg whites
100 g flour
1/2 vanilla bean

Preheat the oven at 190 degrees C.
Mix the butter and the sugar until creamy. Scrape the vanilla seeds into the mixture. Add half of the egg whites and mix until incorporated. Then add half of the flour. Add the rest of the whites and then the rest of the flour. You should have a smooth batter.
With the help of a spoon spread the batter into circles on a parchment paper lined pan. Bake for 10 minutes. Open the oven and roll the circles over your cannoli tubes. Bake 3-5 more minutes. Remove the tubes and let the shells cool.

For the rose mousse

Use this recipe.

For the cocoa coffee tuile shells

rhum
50 g golden raisins
90 g butter
90 g powdered sugar
3 egg whites
90 g flour
10 g cocoa powder
1 tsp espresso powder

Boil some water. Remove from heat, add the rhum and the raisins. Cover and let steep as much as possible.
Preheat the oven at 200 degrees C. Proceed as above (after spreading the batter place the raisins on top of the circles). Bake for 8 minutes, roll over and bake 2 more minutes.

For the Kahlua cream

Use this recipe.

For the phylo shells

Use the recipe and kneading instructions from here.

Roll about 50 g of dough as thin as you can. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle sugar cinnamon mixture all over. Top with a second one. Using a cookie cutter, cut as many circles as you can and roll them over the cannoli forms.
Bake them at 200 degrees Celsius for about 10-12 minutes until golden brown.

For the ricotta pistachio cream

375 g ricotta
50 g bitter sweet chocolate grated
25 g pistachios, roasted and chopped
25 g candied orange peel, candied cherries or lemon peel (optional – I did not use it this time)
60 g powdered sugar
cinnamon (as much as you like)

Beat the cheese with the sugar and cinnamon until creamy. Add the chocolate and pistachios and beat until evenly distributed.

To assemble

For the vanilla tuilles I melted some white chocolate, dipped the shell ends in it and then I rolled them in a mixture of chopped pistachios and crushed rose petals.

Pipe the mousse/ cream inside each shell. Eat them immediately. They are best filled right before eating, but the unfilled shells can be kept in an air tight container for a few days.