Easy Cannoli Cream

Recipe: Mini Cannoli Cream Cups

Source:  Cooking with Sugar

Time: 40 minutes

Ease: 5

Taste: 8

Leftover Value: 8 

*For the first day only.  It won't keep for much longer as cream gets watery and shells get soggy.

Down the Drain or Keep it in the Strainer: Keep it in the Strainer!

Cannoli have always been an untouchable dessert for me.  They are one of my favorite desserts of all time, but intimidate me like crazy.  Then I found this recipe that made them not so scary, and actually, a little healthier.

Just a little.  Too much would be no good.

We start with ricotta cheese which God created to make the world a better place.  The recipe suggests staining the ricotta in cheese cloth over night to remove excess water in the cheese.  This helps to make the cheese mixture thicker.

Patience is not one of my major virtues in the kitchen.  So instead of the whole overnight procedure, I just dumped my ricotta into a bowl I lined with paper towels.  I pressed the paper towels into the ricotta lightly to get rid of any moisture left from it sitting in its container.

The cream is as simple as: ricotta, powdered sugar, white sugar, and vanilla.  The recipe says to wait and sprinkle the mini chocolate chips on top of the final product, but I wanted my cannoli bites to be pretty authentic.  Nothing is better than cannoli with loads of chocolate chips mixed right into the cheese.

After this mixture is made it goes into the fridge to firm up for as long as it takes you to make the crusts.

The shells make this recipe a little healthier than typical cannoli.  Ordinarily, cannoli are made up of the cheese mixture and a shell which has been formed into a tube and fried.

If I'm being completely honest, my heart really longs for those kinds of cannoli.

In my own home cooking though, these are a fair trade.

Sprinkle a little sugar on top of a rolled out refrigerated pie crust.

Sprinkle a little cinnamon.

Swirl the sugar and cinnamon around with your hand.  Spread it out all over the surface of the pie crust.

If you are unlike me and can plan ahead, mix the sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl so that you only have to sprinkle once.

Yes, that sounds like a much smarter option.

After you've either sprinkled sugar then cinnamon, or sprinkled a cinnamon sugar mixture, use a rolling pin to lightly press the mixture into the crust.

Now cut out your mini pie crusts.  Using a circular cookie cutter, a biscuit cutter, or a cup of a little under 3 inches wide make circles close together in the pie crust. 

Press each circle into an ungreased mini muffin pan.

You can press the corners down perfectly if you want.  Clearly, I did not.  I call it an artistic flair.

You'll be left with a lot of extra pie crust.  Don't throw it away!  Pack it firmly in a ball.

And roll it out to make some more crusts.  One pie crust should yield between 16-18 mini pie crusts total.

They are so pretty!  The cinnamon sugar mixture is the perfect bit of flavor, leaving them still a healthier option than deep fried shells.

To fill the cannoli cups, put the cannoli cream into a gallon size ziploc bag.  Cut off one of the bottom corners and use it as a pastry bag to fill each cup.  Then sprinkle mini chocolate chips on top of each cup.

These were so close to the real thing that I think I went into shock over the fact that I had made them.  They work as a perfect substitute for the real thing.

Guest Chef: Hubby's Any Day Queso

Recipe: Any Day Queso
Source: The Orange Strainer (Hubby)
Time: 40-50 minutes prep time, 2-3 hours cooking on low in crock pot
Ease: 2
Taste: 7
Leftover Value: 7
Down the Drain or Keep it in the Strainer: Keep it in the Strainer!

In reality, this was not just any day queso, but game day queso.  Apparently, my hubby is always in charge of creating nacho heaven at his parents' house on Super Bowl Sunday.  This was news to me, but I took him at his word.

Since BJ's and Shoprite were completely out of queso when we stopped by late Super Bowl Sunday Eve and then again early Sunday afternoon (gee, I wonder why?) he decided he would have to make his own.

I've learned over recent years how particular hubby has become with his cheese.  Whenever we order chips and queso, I'm always satisfied.  After all, cheese in itself is delicious.  How could cheese with extra ingredients ever go wrong?

Hubby, on the other hand, instantly becomes a food critic and will become disgusted if the cheese falls short of his ultimate favorite from Qdoba.

This said, his goal on game day was to create a Qdoba effect in his cheese.  If you've never been to a Qdoba, it is similar to a Chipotle, Moe's, Pancheros, etc.  However, he claims Qdoba serves up the best burritos and has the best queso.

Here's what you'll need:
3 roasted poblano peppers
1 1/2 tsp minced garlic
2 plum tomatoes finely diced
1 cup heavy cream

And, of course, cheese.  Cheese, cheese, and more cheese.

1 cup monterey jack cheese
1 cup cheddar cheese
1 cup american cheese

Begin by placing the poblano peppers on a baking sheet.  Put the pan in the broiler, and turn the peppers occasionally.  This is going to sound strange, but you want the peppers to be blackened on all sides.

(Note: The hands featured in this post are my hubby's.  But you knew that already because the minute you saw them you recognized them instantly as manly man hands.)

Trust me, life will get better soon.

After the peppers are blackened on all sides, wrap each pepper in a piece of tin foil.

Let your tin foil art sit for about 30 minutes to cool.

While you're waiting for the peppers to cool, you can begin placing the other ingredients in a 1 and 1/2 quart crock pot.  Start with 1 and 1/2 tsp of minced garlic.

Dice up two plum tomatoes.  Make sure to put them in a cute bowl like this.

Only to then dump them into the crock pot.

Dump in a cup of Monterey Jack cheese...

then decide that the picture looks better with you sprinkling the cheese in with your fingers, and sprinkle in a cup of cheddar cheese.

*Note: If you like your queso to have an orange color to it, then use orange cheddar.  Hubby must have had a traumatic childhood experience with orange cheddar.  For as long as I've known him, he has refused to go near it.

Crumble up a cup of American cheese,

and dump it on top of the other two cheeses.

By now your peppers should have cooled.  With your fingers you want to pinch and pull off the blackened skin of the peppers.

Knives like these terrify me.  It's only been in recent time that I've been able to pick one up without crying like a baby.

However, they are so very photogenic, especially when paired with slivers of poblano pepper.

Dice up the pepper slivers.

Due to my recent knife confession, now you know for sure that these are not my hands.

That was my plan all along.

Slide the peppers off your cutting board and on top of the cheese.

Here's the very very bad part.

Dump in a cup of heavy cream.

Do it quickly and don't look back.
  

If you want, you can give it all a little mix, but we didn't.  Let it cook in the crock pot on low for about two hours.  After the cheeses start to melt you will want to begin giving it the occasional stir.

While it didn't knock hubby's socks off, I liked it just fine.  It wasn't too thick, a quality which I can't stand in queso.  The flavor and texture both carried smoothly throughout the many many servings I took.