The last cake made in 2014 and the first cake made in the year was cannoli cake.
My mom proposed cannoli cake as dessert for our xmas feast. As per our custom, we were brainstorming greedily; this year, getting at our roots: chicken cacciatore, risotto, lots of Italian red wine. Cannoli cake sounded like the perfect end to that meal to me too, and straightaway thought aloud, constructing a cake of a deconstructed pastry. Mid-recipe blur, I returned my attention to my mother— “Did you have something specific in mind when you said cannoli cake?” “No,” she replied, smiling a bit triumphantly, “It just sounded like a good idea and I wanted to see what you would make.”
What I made was two layers of European style genoise, brushed with rum simple-syrup, sandwiching a cannoliesque filling (see recipe below) and frosted in Italian meringue buttercream. Also made cannoli shell pastry, rolled it out and cut it with cookie-cutters. Fried them golden crisp and stuck them in the frosting, birds and stars and evergreens.
For New Year’s Eve, I stripped down the cake even further, using only one layer of cake topped generously with mascarpone-ricotta fluff, mini-chocolate chips and pale green chopped pistachios.
RECIPE IN BRIEF: CANNOLI CAKE FILLING
1 cup ricotta
1 cup mascarpone
1/3 cup confectioners sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
bit of lemon zest
pinch of salt
¾ cup mini-chocolate chips
¼ cup finely chopped pistachio
In the bowl of a standing mixer or by hand with a good wooden spoon, beat together the ricotta and mascarpone cheeses. Sift in the powdered sugar. Beat together with the vanilla, lemon zest and salt. Mix in the chocolate chips and chopped pistachios if you use them. They work extremely well for filling between layers of cake. Leaving the sweetened cheeses white works better for frosting or topping a layer cake.
Glitter Sweets 