Daring Bakers Challenge – Cannoli

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.

As you know cannoli are fried, tube-shaped pastry shells filled with sweetened ricotta cheese, pastry cream, mousse, whipped cream, ice cream, etc. Fortunately, we were given great latitude in this challenge. I have never eaten cannoli and have never wanted to. I don’t own cannoli forms, I don’t fry, and I don’t eat soy cheese or creams. But I do love these challenges! So you won’t see beautiful little pastries in this post. No, I went with a baked, savory, stacked variation with the clever name (and so fun to say) Cannolipolean.

The only required element of this challenge was the dough. I love to make dough and this dough was fun to make. It had wine in it! I loved the smell of the wine as I was rolling out the dough and as it was baking. I made a one-fourth portion of the recipe, yielding a tiny little dough ball.

It rested overnight, then I rolled out four 5-inch rounds.

I popped them into mini tart pans to bake – they just happened to be the perfect size.

A baked version is not as crispy as the fried, but these little discs browned nicely and were very crispy.

For my Cannolipolean filling, I chose two of my favorite ingredients – mushrooms and broccoli. I sauteed them with onions, garlic, wine and lots of herbs.

This turned out to be a very nice dinner. It was tasty and just the right size. And so I’ve still never eaten a traditional cannoli pastry, but that’s okay. I have a new favorite word, “Cannolipolean”!!