Daring Bakers November - Cannoli

It's Daring Bakers time again, and again we are venturing into new territory. There was no baking this month but there was ... deep frying!

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.

I've never deep fried anything before - the thought of all that hot oil just waiting to tip over or catch alight scares me just a little bit. Ok a LOT. But this is the daring bakers after all so I was up for the challenge.

I didn't want to purchase cannoli forms just for this one challenge so I decided to cut out some shapes instead. I rolled the dough using my pasta machine (so easy) and then chose some cookie cutters in interesting shapes. Problem was, they didn't cut through the dough easily and when I tried to lift them out they tore and stretched out of shape. I did get one decent heart though ...

Oooh pretty!

I made the chocolate recipe exactly as stated and also used the traditional filling. However because I am a citrus nut I doubled the amount of orange peel and added in the zest of an orange as well.

The recipe is ridiculously long so I won't post it all here. You can find the recipe on Lisa's blog here.
The taste test ...

Never having had cannoli before I really wasn't sure what to expect, but these were really tasty! My first batch was a little oily as I don't think the oil was quite hot enough in spite of what my thermometer said. The shells were crunchy and definitely moreish. I could snack on those all day. The filling was what really made it for me though, it was a like a choc-orange flavoured Sicilian cheesecake. Yum!

I think I've conquered my fear of deep drying (I made beer battered fish last night for dinner) but it's still not something I will do regularly.

Thanks for a great challenge!