Skip This One Prep Step And Your Homemade Cannoli Will Crack Apart

Originally from Sicily, cannoli are handheld treats of fried dough filled with a creamy, slightly sweet mixture, sometimes topped with a wide variety of items like mini chocolate chips or pistachios, and can come in other flavors as well. A bite into a perfect cannoli begins with the cracking of the crisp pastry shell, followed by the rush of the cool, decadent filling, along with the textures and flavors of any toppings. A quality cannoli is easy to pick up from a local Italian bakery, but much more difficult to execute well at home. Writer Emily Hunt, who spent nearly a year working at an Italian bakery, shared her best tips for making bakery-worthy cannoli, including the crucial step necessary to prevent cracked cannoli shells. 

Hunt says that a good seal where the edges of the pastry meet is key to helping the treat keep its shape. After the dough has been thinly rolled and cut into circles, the delicate dough is then wrapped around a well-greased cannoli rod, a tube made of thin metal that helps the pastry hold its shape while frying. But to ensure the dough doesn't turn into a taco shell shape while frying, Hunt writes that her preferred method of sealing it to use a light swipe of egg whites to help the two ends adhere to one another as she wraps each pastry circle around a cannoli rod. 

While the egg whites act as a sort of mild glue, the whites alone won't keep the edges sealed without a bit of pressure. Hunt uses a decent amount of pressure to gently press the two edges together, creating a firmer seal. She advises against smashing the edges together, but to be delicate with the press, so that the line of the seal is almost indistinguishable. Alternatively, you could skip the frying altogether and make cannoli with this genius hack.

Along with properly sealing the shells' edges, Hunt notes that while it might seem out of place in the ingredients list, wine is actually an essential component of cannoli shells as it inhibits the development of gluten and prevents the dough from becoming too stiff, as well as aids in the blistering of the shell when frying. Hunt also suggests a digital thermometer to keep a close eye on the temperature of your frying oil, which should be maintained at about 350 degrees Fahrenheit to fry up perfectly crisp cannoli shells. 

Additionally, Hunt mentions that the dough of the shells needs to be completely submerged during the entire frying process, as opposed to something like doughnuts, which can be flipped and left alone briefly. As for the filling, Hunt shares that a blend of both mascarpone and ricotta is best, as the ricotta keeps the filling light while the mascarpone lends more richness and depth of flavor. Use sheep's milk ricotta if you can find it, which is a traditional Sicilian ingredient for cannoli.