You crack a fried tube of wine-scented dough, blistered, filled at the last minute with sweetened sheep's ricotta, candied orange, and pistachios at the ends. Sugar on the shell. It shatters, then yields, and you eat it over a plate because there will be crumbs.
Sicily's pastry, with a firm home in Palermo and the west of the island. Once a carnival sweet, now year-round. Cow's ricotta is a substitute; sheep's is the filling you want.
Fill only when you are ready to eat. An hour early and they die, the shell gone soft. Pipe from both ends so every bite has cream.
Method
- 01
Rub the lard or butter into the flour, sugar, and cocoa with your fingertips until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs and smells faintly of chocolate. Add the Marsala and bring it together into a firm dough — it should not be sticky. Wrap it and let it rest for an hour so the gluten relaxes and you can roll it thin. Don't skip the rest; a tight dough will fight you.
- 02
Roll the dough as thin as you dare, cut ovals, and wrap each around a cannoli tube, sealing the overlap with egg white. Fry at 350°F until the shells are blistered and gold, a couple of minutes. Drain them, let them cool, then slide the tubes out — the shells should shatter at a touch. If they are pale, they needed another moment in the oil.
- 03
Beat the drained ricotta with the icing sugar until it is smooth and sweet, with no lumps of cheese remaining. Fold in the candied orange peel so it is scattered through, not clumped. Taste; it should be creamy, orange-scented, and only just sweet enough. Keep this filling in the refrigerator until the moment you are ready to eat — an hour early and the shells will die.
- 04
Pipe the filling into the shells from both ends just before you serve, so the cream meets in the middle and every bite has filling. Dip the ends in the chopped pistachios. Eat over a plate — they shatter, then yield, and there will be crumbs. Fill only when you are ready; a cannolo that sits is a cannolo that has gone soft, and that is a Sicilian tragedy.
