My Recipes

Cannoli siciliani

This is the recipe of cannoli (well, my family's recipe!). It's a traditional dish from Sicily and it requires very specific ingredients that are sometimes hard to find abroad... there are many Sicilian migrants here, so l am lucky enough to find almost anything. If you can't find ricotta cheese, you can try and substitute it with cream cheese or whipped cream or a mixture of both. To make the shells, you need a mould that l have brought from Sicily... but it's a very simple object and you should be able to find/make something like it. They are simple cylinders (about 10 cm long) made of heat resistant aluminum and empty inside.


Ingredients:


For the shells (makes 25):


250 grs of plain flour
25 grs of lard
1 tb of sugar
½ glass wine of red wine vinegar
1 pinch of salt
1 egg white
Lard or vegetable oil for deep frying




For the ricotta filling:


1 kg of ricotta cheese
600 grs of sugar
100 grs of dark chocolate
Candied pumpkin and/or candied orange peels (optional)


For the shells, knead the flour, lard, sugar, vinegar and salt together until obtaining a smooth dough. Divide it in six and start working on one of the pieces. Flatten it with a rolling pin and then pass it in the pasta machine. Start from the largest pin and pass the dough through several times, progressively thinning the dough, till the 3rd thinner most pin. You can also roll the dough by hand... just make it very thin: approx. 2 mm thick.


Then get a coffee plate, place it on top of the rolled dough and cut around it. Make approximately 25 circles. Roll them loosely around the mould and stick the ends with some egg white or water. Deep fry them in hot vegetable oil or lard carefully removing the mould half through the frying process. When ready, place them in a plate lined with kitchen paper and dry off the oil. Let them cool down. These shells can be kept up to 4 weeks in an air tight container.


For the ricotta filling, sieve the ricotta very finely and keep in the fridge overnight. The following day, add the sugar to the ricotta, mix well and sieve it again. Then add the chocolate in thick pieces. If you want, you can also add candied pumpkin and candied orange peels to the cream.


To prevent the cannoli from getting soggy and soft, fill the shells with a generous amount of ricotta cream just before serving them and sprinkle them with icing sugar.
















BACI DI DAMA

I thought I'd start this topic by posting the recipe of my all time favourite cookies.  Their name means "lady's kisses" because their shape resembles a kiss.  They are originally from Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy.  They are not a family recipe, but these cookies bring back lots of happy childhood memories.  They have always been my favourites and my mother would usually buy me a few from the local pastry shop as a treat when I was down with the flu.  Now that I live far away and I cannot find them in the shops, I have learnt how to make them, so that I can bake them for my daughters whenever they get sick (and not only!!!).

Ingredients for 35-40 cookies:

200 gr of almond or hazelnut meal

200 gr of flour

200 gr of softened unsalted butter

200 gr of sugar

80/100 gr of dark cooking chocolate

Mix together the almond meal, the sieved flour, the butter and the sugar and knead into a smooth dough.  Make it into a ball, wrap it in cling wrap and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Then make 70-80 small balls (2 cm) and put them on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Bake in a preheated oven at 160C for 15 minutes.  When ready, let the cookies cool down.  In the meantime, melt the dark chocolate in the microwave and let it cool until it thickens.  Then stick 2 cookies together with a little bit of melted chocolate.  Put them in the fridge for 15 minutes and then serve.

You can also try the chocolate version... just add 2 tablespoons of bitter cocoa powder to the dough.