Daring Bakers: Cannoli

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.

I was really excited about this challenge. But time got away from me. I had house guests coming for Thanksgiving, and I wanted to make it while they were here. But then they were here, and I got busy with, well, Thanksgiving.

Cookies…

Scones…

Cornbread…

Pies…

Brunch…

And a few other things I neglected to photograph. I eventually gave up the idea, because I wanted to spend time with my guests, not time in my kitchen. Though for the record, I did a lot of the baking mentioned above before they arrived.

I finally tackled this project today. I had the dough ready to go – one thing I did make while guests were here – and I mixed the ricotta filling last night. It was incredibly difficult to roll out. I’m guessing that’s because it was in the refrigerator for four days? I didn’t get them nearly as thin as I should have, but at this point I just wanted to be done with it.

I was unable to find cannoli forms anywhere within a 100-mile radius, so my friend Anita loaned me her two sets after she completed her challenge. (Thanks again, Nita!)

I wanted to photograph the frying process, but I was reluctant to take my attention away from the hot oil, so I refrained.

Because I used red wine in the dough, it was difficult to tell when they were browned, and I think I overcooked a few of them. I only lost about three – either they stuck to the form or I just accidentally broke them. Not bad, considering I made about 18.

They look nice. They taste good enough. I took a few to the neighbors, but still have a stack of them here staring at me, and a bowl of leftover ricotta filling. Any ideas what to do with that??

I doubt I’ll make these again. I really don’t enjoy frying things, and I don’t think their taste warranted all the work. I will admit they are pretty impressive looking, but I'm satisfied with my decision to spend time with close friends instead of pulling my hair out over cannoli.

Ugly Betty

November is a big month for friends' birthdays. This week I baked for two of them.

In the past, my go-to mailing cake has been a dense chocolate-chocolate chip cake with a chocolate ganache glaze.

But I’m kind of tired of baking that one, so I decided to change it up this time. I found a recipe for Milky Way Swirl Cake in the Chocolate Cake Mix Doctor cookbook. I’ve been doing my best to avoid cake mixes lately; I don’t like the artificial taste, and I prefer to know how to pronounce all the ingredients in the food I bake, so for the most part I use the Cake Mix Doctor books for inspiration and frosting recipes.

I decided on Marcy Goldman’s Moist and Mellow Yellow Cake recipe from my standby, The Best of Better Baking .com.


Let me interrupt the cake story for a minute to announce – I got a new camera! My first DSLR. It arrived in the middle of this baking project.


At last, no more scheduling my baking according to the amount of daylight I have left.

Back to my cake. Basically the Milky Way Swirl Cake is a yellow cake with melted Milky Way bars swirled into the batter.


There are very specific instructions with regard to the swirling process. “Spoon the Milky Way mixture in a ring on top of the batter, making sure not to touch the sides of the pan. With a dinner knife, swirl through the batter to create a marbled effect. Do not scrape the bottom of the pan.”

Yeah, well, you need to tell me why I shouldn’t do something, or I’m going to do what I want. The one on the right is pre-swirl, but you can see most of it is touching the edge.


So I put them in the oven, and go about cleaning the kitchen. Eventually I can smell something burning, and I discover they are spilling over the top onto the cupcakes below them.


This should have been my first sign of things to come.

Not only did they sink at the last minute, but one of them completely stuck to the pan and didn’t make the cut for gift-giving. Oooooh, so THAT’S why you’re not supposed to let the caramel touch the pan. Lesson learned. The one somewhat salvageable cake did have a chunk missing from the top, but I did my best to piece it back together, and hoped I could disguise it with the glaze.

In an attempt to detract from the ugliness of the patched top, I sliced a candy bar and placed it around the top of the cake, but that seemed to make the whole thing even more homely looking. I ended up wrapping it in plastic wrap, tying a ribbon around it, and calling it good. What else could I do?

I took the finished cake photos with the new camera, then later that night accidentally erased the photos. Oops.

I still had one more cake to complete. The problem was that I’d run out of flour (and time), so I had to resort to a cake mix. I was careful not to let the caramel touch the side of the pan this time, but some of it snuck out and I had a few uglies on the outside of the cake. But I managed to get it out of the pan, and it seemed to be okay. I made the glaze, which consisted of more melted Milky Way bars, covered it in sprinkles to attempt to hide the imperfections, then covered the whole thing and let the glaze set overnight.

I don't know what happened, but when I got up the next morning the cake had somehow collapsed in spots. Now it really looked miserable.


Eventually I packaged them up and sent them on their way. What is it they say about first impressions and presentation? I was counting on the element of surprise and the creative packaging to make up for the sad little cakes.


I’ll make this again sometime, and I’ll make it from scratch. But I will follow the instructions, I will bake it in a bundt pan, and I will refrain from attempting to mail it anywhere.

Milky Way Swirl Cake

• Make a yellow cake, your choice


• Melt 5 oz of Milky Way candy bars with 2 T of water. Cool slightly, then add 1/3 cup of cake batter and 1 T flour.


• Spoon the Milky Way mixture in a ring on top of the batter, making sure not to touch the sides of the pan. With a dinner knife, swirl through the batter to create a marbled effect. Do not scrape the bottom of the pan. This is important! If you DO, the caramel will stick to the sides of the pan and you'll never get it out in one piece.


• Bake at 350 until the cake springs back when touched and a cake tester comes out clean.

Milky Way Glaze:

• Melt 5 oz. Milky Way candy bars, 2 T butter, and 2 tsp. water.

The recipe instructs you to let this cool for 10 minutes before pouring it onto the cake, but I think it would harden too fast. I poured mine on right away. Another instance of Stubborn Logic: “If you don’t tell me why not, then it must not be important”. I’m not sure if that’s why some of the second cake sort of collapsed. Who knows? I say use your best judgment.

Don't Freak Out

Remember when no one freaked out when you’d get homemade candy and cookies in your trick-or-treat bag? Eric and I are children of the '70s. We both spent our childhoods in small Northern California towns -- his had a couple thousand people; mine, just a couple hundred. We each have memories of homemade popcorn balls, cookies, and candy being passed out in our neighborhoods on Halloween. We didn’t personally know the people that were handing them out, yet we (our parents) trusted that they were safe.

We now live a block outside a city with a population of somewhere around 100,000. While that is huge compared to our childhood towns (which, by the way, haven't grown in population), after living in Portland, Oregon, for 15 years, it feels tiny. There are four kids that live on our street, and we know each of them. They are often beneficiaries of my baking projects, so I decided, why not make something for them for Halloween? I debated for a while on what to make. Cookies with royal icing (specifically spider webs) made the short list. As did popcorn balls. I’ve never made popcorn balls, and by Friday I was getting kind of lazy about the whole project, so popcorn balls it was.

While I was browsing for recipes, I was disappointed to see so many of them telling me to use microwave popcorn. Does no one pop their own popcorn anymore? I used a hot-air popper for years, but eventually discovered I could achieve the same effect by using a paper bag in a microwave, so I ditched the extra appliance and now keep a paper bag in the pantry next to the popcorn canister.


I suppose it’s time to replace the bag...

The recipe I found appealed to me because it described their flavor as "Cracker-Jacky". It called for eight quarts of popcorn. Eight quarts?! That’s a lot of popcorn. I wanted popcorn balls for four kids, not 40.

Ingredients:
1 C. granulated sugar
3/4 C. light corn syrup
1/4 C. molasses
2 tbsp. butter
1/2 tsp. salt
8 quarts (1 gallon) popped popcorn, unpopped kernels removed

I figured two quarts would be plenty, but it didn’t think adjusting the recipe accordingly would give me enough caramel. So I kind of eyeballed it.

The recipe instructs you to add the peanuts to the popcorn after you’ve melted the rest of the ingredients together and poured them in with the popcorn. But either there wasn’t enough caramel mixture, or I didn’t work fast enough (or a little of both), because the peanuts just didn’t stick, and most of them ended up in the bottom of the bowl.


So I tried again. I used the same amount of popcorn, but used about 1/4 c. sugar, 1/3 c. corn syrup, 1/8 c. molasses, the full 2 T of butter, and a pinch of salt. Much, much better.




We added spooky rings, a couple pieces of candy, a tube of bubbles, some glow sticks, and Silly Putty to Halloween bags and called it done.


As for the popcorn balls, they are good, but they’re missing something. Like, flavor. They need a lot more caramel, or some secret ingredient that I’m not privy to. I could probably figure it out, but they don't interest me enough to bother. If I decide to bake for the neighbor kids next year, I’ll most likely go with cookies. Better yet, my favorite, caramel.