"Leave the gun. Take the cannoli."
Hey, what's up guys, welcome back to Binging with Babish, where this week
we're using the mere mention of cannoli in "The Godfather" as an excuse to make cannoli, not to mention as an excuse to make
cannoli mold witch fingers. I mean how often we actually get the opportunity to do- oh oh! Okay. All right, enough horseplay.
Let's get down to business
And the first order of business is to drain some whole milk ricotta
In a fine mesh sieve for at least an hour in the fridge to get rid of some of the excess moisture
While that's draining
We're going to make our cannoli dough. This starts by combining 250 grams of all-purpose flour, 30 grams of powdered sugar, sifted
Sifted, no matter how much effort it takes. Two teaspoons cocoa powder
one teaspoon of ground cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of instant espresso powder
Which we're gonna pulse to combine in our food processor before adding 30 milliliters
each of Marsala wine and white wine vinegar
Then once that's nice and sandy
We're going to add 2 tablespoons of butter and one whole egg
Covering and processing for 30 to 45 seconds until our table just can't take it anymore
The whole world is shaking and a rough ball of dough forms
we regret buying that crappy little table top tripod, and bring our cannoli dough over to a
Lightly floured surface to knead for two to five minutes until it becomes silky and elastic. Then much like pasta dough
We're going to wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest in the fridge for 1 hour
Making sure to slap it seven times because that's an Italian tradition that I just made up and getting ready to grease up our cannoli molds.
Normally, you just want to spray these down with Pam, but I don't have any Pam
So I'm going to drizzle them with vegetable oil and then roll them around in a rimmed baking sheet until they are evenly coated with lubricant.
Then, again, just like pasta
It's time to turn our dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll out thin and wide.
We're aiming for one sixteenth of an inch thick. If you can't measure that, then who cares?
Just roll it out super thin and then we're going to grab a four inch wide
biscuit cutter and cut
What I'm guessing are about four inch wide rounds out of this piece of dough
Reserving the scraps and covering our dough rounds with plastic wrap wrapping our scraps in plastic wrap till we're ready to tap into that trap
I give up, that doesn't make any sense
Anyway, we're taking our dough rounds and we are placing our cannoli form into the center
brushing one side with egg white and wrapping it around the top placing the egg white brushed side over the other so it seals shut,
not unlike the loudmouth of a state witness after insert mobster joke here now if we're talking Italian pastry made in
1945 we're talking about deep fried in lard
Why, I'm not sure but all the Nonna recipes that I looked up all said, lard
So let these guys go for two to four minutes or until they are golden brown
flipping at least once if possible and then draining on a wire rack which unlike paper towels is going to help them prevent from getting too soggy.
Then while we let these guys get cool enough to handle
It's time to take our ricotta out of the fridge, strain out any extra drips of moisture
it has not yet yielded and then press it through the fine mesh sieve using a rubber spatula
So we get a super creamy, super fine textured ricotta, to which we're going to add
125 grams of sifted powdered sugar, this to make sure that we don't get any lumps of sugar in our
Cannoli cream and then using our whisk attachment, we're going to add a half teaspoon
Of ground cinnamon because we forgot and then we're gonna use the whisk attachment to whisk together our cannoli cream
We don't want to go too crazy
But we want to make this a nice, light, airy
Pastry filling for the decadently deep fried shells that now await us and I'm pretty sure I've covered this in previous episodes
But the best way to fill a pastry bag is by putting the guy into a drinking glass
nozzle down first and spreading the bag around the outside of the glass so we can just dump our pastry cream inside even though the
Shot is massively overexposed. That's better
do a little practice squeeze to make sure your
Piping skills are on point and then we just can't leave a dirty table like this
We have to clean it up with our fingers, and our mouths.
Alright, so now that the pastry shells have cooled off a little bit. It's time to separate them from their forms
Now these might stick a little bit if any errant egg white found its way outside the overlapping flaps of dough
But just be patient, squeeze and push and then set these aside to cool completely, before we begin the filling and decoration process.
Now, I personally like cannoli whose ends have been dipped in chocolate
I think it's a classy look.
There are a million in one ways to decorate cannoli, only you can be the Angelina Jolie of your cannoli
Sorry, Chef John, 's the best I could do. Once we've allowed the chocolate to harden up in the fridge for 15 minutes
We're going to start filling these guys with the cannoli cream
So start on one side and swirl in a circle until you filled the entire circumference of the interior of the cannoli
Does that make any sense? It'll make more sense when you do it for yourself
Just fill the thing with cream. And then it's time to talk garnishes.
Two very classic garnishes are finely chopped pistachios and miniature chocolate chips
We're just gonna dump those onto the open ends of each side of our cannoli
And then I'm going to leave three plain for posterity
But all of them are going to get a generous dusting of powdered sugar which for the third and final time has been, of course, sifted.
Plate them up all pretty and then decide which one you're gonna give a try for yourself
I think I'm gonna go for a
Chocolate chip one and I gotta say this is a Clean Plate club entrant. A light crispy deep-fried shell, a creamy and flavorful
Interior and fun, eye-catching garnishes. It's a Clean Plate club member for sure
But as has become the theme of last few episodes, I'm not gonna eat this entire plate of deep-fried sugar-coated decadence
I'm going to wrap it up and save it for a dinner party when my guests can induct it into the Clean Plate Club
Hey guys
I did a really fun project with Coppola Diamond Wines where we filmed a few videos and they're finally live
I created a few simple recipes that were inspired by summer adventures
You can check out the videos and recipes if you follow the links in the description
Coppola Wines. Cannoli. Francis Ford Coppola. Godfather. Are you getting the connection here?
If not, I'm sorry, but I think you'll enjoy the videos anyway