If you’ve ever been to Italy, Sicily, or a restaurant that serves authentic Sicilian food, you’ve probably enjoyed a cannoli or two.
The Sicilian cannoli is now eaten all over the world, but it was invented on a tiny island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.
In case you’ve gone your whole life not knowing what cannoli is, it’s essentially a fried, tube-shaped wafer that’s stuffed with ricotta cream and decorated with chocolate shavings or fruit.
It’s thought that this dessert was invented by Arab women during the Arab domination of Sicily.
We all know someone who would snigger at the slightly, er, suggestive shape of the cannoli, and there’s a history behind that, too.
There’s a myth that the Arab women created cannoli in its long, cylindrical shape as praise to the “ability” of their distant men. This might have been a religious thing, though – so get your mind out of the gutter.
Anyway, enough phallic talk. It’s time to meet 93-year-old Clara.
Clara lives in Sicily herself, so you know she’s the real deal when it comes to authentic cannoli making.
It also helps that she’s so old, because while her younger neighbors have found simplified ways to make their cannoli, she still does it the traditional way: by using bamboo rods.
Unsurprisingly, in her 70 years of making cannoli, Clara has become pretty famous in her town.
If you want to follow her exact recipe to make the best cannoli ever, you’re in luck! She was kind enough to share her secrets with Pasta Grannies on YouTube.
First off, you’ll need 50g granulated sugar, 200ml water and 200g lard.
Back in the day, Clara will have had to hand-mix these ingredients, but today, she adds them all to a food processor. Hey, she’s 93 – she deserves a rest!
Next, Clara adds 2tbsp vinegar. An unusual ingredient, you might think, but Clara says it gives the pastry more crunchy bubbles.
And the final ingredient for the pastry: 1kg 00 flour.
Once the dough has formed, Clara kneads it for 10 minutes – and this she does by hand.
It must be hard work in the middle of a hot Sicilian summer, but Clara makes good work of it. She’s clearly a natural after so many decades of practice!
Like any good Sicilian, Clara has two pasta-rolling machines, which she uses to roll out the pastry, before using an oval pastry cutter to shape the dough.
Now onto the step that makes Clara’s recipe really unique: shaping the cannoli.
She might be in her 90s, but nothing would stop Clara from making her own rods out of bamboo.
She lays these bamboo rods lengthways over the pastries and uses water to stick each side of the pastry together over the molds.
Next comes the deep-frying. Clara fries the pastries until they’re hard, then removes the bamboo rods and continues to fry until they’re nut-colored.
She then mixes cow’s milk ricotta with sugar for the filling, and adds a handful of chocolate buttons, before using a knife to fill both ends of the cannoli.
Just looking at Clara’s creations is enough to make your mouth water.
In case you were wondering just how old this recipe is, a 90-year-old woman gave it to Clara when she was young – so it could be nearing 200 years by now.
Who wouldn’t want a traditional, authentic recipe of a classic Sicilian dessert, from a Sicilian woman herself?
Watch the video below to see Clara in action, and for the full recipe in detail!
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