After a little taste of these delicious italian treats, i have been craving them, but it is virtually impossible to find cannoli's in provo utah, so after months of craving them, I decided I needed to do something about it, so I got on the internet and searched for a good recipe, and ways to make them. After a while of searching i found a good recipe that i felt was do-able for the filling, but the real challenge came with making the shells, because you have to have a special cannoli tube, which i did not have.
I would have gladly gone and bought some, but you see they don't sell these tubes in the local grocery store, you have to go to an italian market.. which are far and few between in provo, so what does a girl do? IMPROVISE!! instead of searching all over "happy valley" for some cannoli tubes, i simply looked through our kitchen, and found something that i thought just might work. After some searching, i found something that just might work! I ran my idea by my roommates, they were a little hesitant by my idea, but i decided to stick with it. What was this brilliant idea of mine? The handle of and ice cream scoop! I had to manipulate the scoop itself a little in order to make it work, but in the end it worked out beautifully!
Now that I had the recipe, a way to make the shells, and some spare time it was time to fullfill my craving! FINALLY! The filling was fairly simple and did not take a whole lot of time to make, it was just a matter of blending all of the ingredients together. The dough for the shells, and the actually cooking of the shells are what took FOREVER! In order to get some quality shells out of the dough, it had to be rolled out super thin (paper thin to be exact) which takes a LOT of effort to do with a rolling pin. I was wishing i had a pasta maker about halfway through rolling out the dough! Now the trick to getting a perfect circle for the shells is using a martini glass to get that perfect size and shape. Now you wouldn't think that me, being a mormon girl going to BYU would have a martini glass laying around.... but luckily, thanks to a gag gift by my loving brother i had 4 of them!
After heating up the oil and wrapping the perfect, very thin, circle dough around my handy little ice cream scoop, the cannoli making process was in full swing! I spent hours in the kitchen making cannoli shells, one at a time. But in the end it was all worth it! I now know how to make cannoli's (however i think next time I will order some cannoli tubes online to speed up the process) and satisfy my cravings, even when I am 2000 miles away from Hoboken, NJ. The finished product turned out delicious! It wasn't quite "Cake Boss" status... but in my defense it was my first time making them! Next time, i think i can work out the kinks and add in a little of my own flavor to them. But all in all, i was very happy with my end result! :)
