Sweets and desserts
Cannoli
Crisp fried Sicilian pastry tubes filled with sweetened sheep's milk ricotta, candied fruit and pistachio.
Cannoli are tubes of thin, crisp pastry, fried in fat and filled with sweetened ricotta, usually from sheep's milk. The ends are dipped in chopped pistachio, candied orange peel or chocolate. They are Sicily's best known sweet, once made mainly for Carnival and now sold all year.
What goes in
- Sheep's milk ricotta741%, Drained and sieved.
- Pastry shells529%, Fried around tubes.
- Sugar212%, Icing sugar in the filling.
- Candied orange peel16%, Ends or filling.
- Pistachio16%, Chopped, on the ends.
- Chocolate chips16%, Often mixed in.
Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each ingredient's share of the dish.
Made step by step
Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house; this is one traditional way, in outline.
Step 1: Rest Hang the ricotta in cloth overnight to drain. Step 2: Knead Knead a stiff dough of flour, lard or butter, sugar and wine. Step 3: Layer Roll it thin, cut into rounds and wrap around metal tubes. Step 4: Fry Fry until blistered and golden, then slide off the tubes and cool. Step 5: Knead Sieve the ricotta with sugar and fold in chocolate or candied fruit. Step 6: Fill Pipe the filling into the shells just before serving and dip the ends in pistachio. Finished Cannoli, by share.
Carnival and the convents
Cannoli are associated with the Palermo area and Caltanissetta, and especially with Carnival. Many stories credit convent kitchens with refining them, as with other Sicilian sweets, and some trace the ricotta and sugar combination to the period of Arab rule. These origins are traditional rather than documented. The town of Piana degli Albanesi near Palermo is known for very large cannoli.
Fill at the last minute
The shells are made from a dough of flour, fat, sugar and wine or vinegar, wrapped around metal tubes and fried until blistered. The ricotta is drained, sieved and sweetened. Because the cheese softens the pastry, good shops fill cannoli only when they are ordered. A soggy cannolo is a sign of filling done hours in advance.
Where it is used
The cheeses in it
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Sources and further reading
Original text and drawings by the EveryCheese desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and kitchen makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.