Cannoli's and Cookies - Around the Kitchen Table

Everyone, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and welcome to Around the Kitchen Table. And it's getting close to that special time of year, so today Susan and I are going to share some of our thoughts and some recipes on cookies. And of course, if it's Christmas time, I have to have cannolis. Now I don't know what I'm going to do since I'm gluten-free now, but I have from now until Christmas to work on that.

I'm sure you will. Hi, Chef, how's it going?

It's going good, and actually I have a plan. It just involves me going out and getting a pizzelle maker because I saw some recipes for gluten-free pizzelles, and I also know that you can— if you get them before they harden up too much, you can roll them.

Those are those lacy things, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I may end up seeing if I can stuff pizzelles with cannoli cream. If not, I'll make pizzelle sandwiches. Either way, I'll get my cannoli.

You are definitely at least half Italian.

Yeah, at least.

There is no doubt.

Especially if you count all the food I've eaten, definitely half Italian. My body weight represents that. So how you been doing?

Good, pretty good. Had a busy weekend. I got the Christmas tree. Went to see Santa with the grandkids, you know, and what else? Yeah, and then of course there's the grandkids' Christmas holiday dance recital, so did that too. So, you know, very busy. And then last week I got a delivery of 192 rugs.

Oh yes, the rugs you ordered.

I did, the rugs I ordered. Gorgeous, amazing Swedish rugs, they're mostly runners, so I'm working through those and I'm going to put them up for sale at some point, but so that in the middle of Christmas, in the middle of moving, and you know, in the middle of everything.

I hear you. I had it really rough, I hate to tell you. Actually Thursday I did something really cool, I had been asked to help judge the Ocean— not ocean, the Orange County Public Schools were having a culinary competition, and they asked me to judge that. Actually, I judged the portion. It was a pretty big competition, and actually, they were doing some outrageous food. They had beautiful, beautiful presentations. At first, they put me on the desserts, finished desserts competition. Then someone that I had met ran over to me and says, "Oh, Chef Dennis, no, no. You're ours. You're with the ones that are competing for the school food. They were actually trying to make things to put on their menu for next year.

Oh, that's your thing. That's your— yeah.

Wow.

So did you enjoy that?

Oh yeah, it was really good. There were 8 teams of high school students that were making things, and they had to make a complete meal. Well, it was an entrée, a side, and a dessert, and they had to work within pretty hard, you know, The constraints were not easy. They had to make things from things they had in their pantry, use what the school bought. So it's not like they could come in from home with all kinds of neat stuff and whip it into something and say, we'd like to have this at school. I said, go back there and see what we got and make something out of it. So, you know, they did a nice job with it.

That's great. And what was the mix with boys and girls?

It was about 50/50. Some teams were all boys and some teams were all girls, and there were a few that were mixed. It was about even in the blend.

The boys got into cooking too. That's great.

It was actually the one that won for presentation was a boys team. Their food was not that unusual or that different for us to really recognize or pick it, but they were very self-assured, very confident, said what they were going to use the food who would attract, why people would eat it. And then some of the others— the one that won was actually a chicken stir-fry, and I'm trying to remember what else it had into it, but it was a lovely blend of flavors. They had an oriental soup with it, and then for dessert they had taken a banana, put peanut butter on it, and rolled it in some granola. So it was a little— the whole thing was a little different. But I mean, you think about it, it's not gourmet food, but it's what they had to work with to make it a little more interesting. There was—

yeah. I love to hear that because I know it's funny, you know, things that generations have changed so much. For example, my, you know, I was a normal cook. I love to cook at home and everything, you know, my kids. But all of a sudden my son, you know, he just took up cooking and enjoyed cooking and enjoys cooking now. And I have found in the later years of my kitchen design practice that more and more men, even, you know, not, not in the beginning of their careers, but in the middle of their careers, have become more and more interested in the kitchen and in cooking. I don't know if you've seen that at all, but me and my industry, we've absolutely seen that.

You know, I have seen it, and I think part of the reason is that all these two parent working families or single mom families that don't always have time to cook, the boys start to take up some responsibility. And honestly, it's gone away from, well, it was a girl thing— not that it ever was for me because I love to cook. Yeah, you know, it's always thought of as, let's— well, you know, the girls are doing other things now, so the boys, if they want to eat, they gotta learn how to cook.

Yeah, that's right. That's right, that's right. So yes, I know, I definitely see a change, and that's why I was curious about that. So that's all good.

Yeah, and I think it was pretty much split up between everybody who was there, and there were like maybe 300-400 contestants altogether. It was a huge, huge competition, so it was really fun. And now I decided to go in and be colorful, so I wore this. And let me tell you something, I got there in a sea of white chef coats with a few black coats. I expected to see some panache and color, and they're kind of looking at me like, who is this guy? On one hand, I felt a little bad. On the other hand, I was like, yeah, you know, I said, I wore white my whole career, now I'm wearing color, so deal with it.

Oh, that's funny. It's like, it's like, you know, a different color belt, you know, like a black belt. That's, that's, it's the blue. You should tell them this is what happens when you You know, when you're like me, you wear blue.

But anyway, it was a fun time, and then Lisa and I spent the weekend down in Fort Lauderdale. It was glorious. Unfortunately, the boat parade started a little late, so when we were filming, we missed it. And right after we shut down, about 5 minutes later, here come all these huge boats. But, you know, we had a great time though. Went in the water yesterday. I was in the ocean Cool! Beach day, yeah.

Nice, nice. I don't dare do that. I saw frost around here this morning, so you're going to make us some wonderful desserts, and I'm going to show us some, you know, a special kind of cookie that I like, and then some ideas on how to display cookies, which are a little bit out of the box. They're a little bit wacky, but You know, it's, it's good to, you know, get some fresh ideas. So, what do you have for us?

Well, today I'm going to make my favorite, which is cannolis. And like I said, you got to have them for Christmas. Really simple to make. And there's a secret that I learned, you know, I struggled with cannolis for a long time. And then an Italian grandmother finally taught me the secret. So I'll share that. And then I'm also going to make, since I have ricotta, and I always try to multi-use what I'm using, I have this ricotta cookie that I learned to make a few years ago that it just kind of melts in your mouth. It's a citrus kind of cookie. I'm making a lemon today. I mean, it could be grapefruit, it could be orange, it could be lime, whatever you really like. But it's a light after-dinner kind of a cookie that you might have with an espresso or with a cup of coffee, and you'll eat 2 or 3 or 4 of them and really be happy. Not difficult to make, just a little extra step in here and then the baking that you have to watch. So what I'm going to do is I need to cream some butter and some sugar for this cookie. So while I'm creaming that and I have the mixer on, I'll mute myself, and if you want to do your slideshow, that would be wonderful.

Sure, sounds good. Okay, so let me do the screen share, move this over. Give me a minute. Okay. Okay, I will do the screen share. Here we go. And okay, so the cookie that I have done for over— became obsessed with over 20 years ago, in the early '80s actually, is a sort of mold, a collection of molds. They used to bring out molds. Different cooking molds every year, new ones, and they're so adorable, and I love them so much. And what— oh yeah, the brown bag cookie mold, brown bag cookie art. So first I have— I just couldn't resist taking some shots of some of the cookie molds I have. This is actually by Hartstone, H-A-R-T-S-T-O-N-E. Now these, you can't really— They're not really sold in the— as new anymore. You can get them— well, you can get them new, but you can get them at places like eBay and other places. So here, look at how adorable these are. What I like about these cookie molds— I have Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy— is that it's great to work with children. You know, all they have to do— it's a regular dough. You spray with a little oil, and then you just pat it in there. So any child can do the patting, and you can pat whatever part of the cookie mold they want. And so these are, you know, some of what I have. Now you can get them on eBay. Here, for example, is a listing. They go under the name of Hartstone, H-A-R-T-S-T-O-N-E, or brown bag cookie mold. Now, they range in price. I think some of the cheaper prices are on eBay. These are about $9 or $10, even $6. Actually, this was back here, 2 slides over. This might have been Etsy. Yeah, they're sold on Etsy. There's a whole bunch of retro. They're all retro molds sold on Etsy. And there's actually a website called Brown Bag Cookie Art. And you can go on there and they, they, it's funny because they don't sell the molds, but they have, it's almost like a little bit of a cult following. So they have recipes. Here are recipes for sugar chocolate cookies, ginger cookies, orange cookies, almond, and lots of other really nice flavors. I love the orange cookies. I love the ginger cookies. And so the actual recipe book is right online and that's what I'll use. And Chef will be happy because they also have— now one of my favorite things to make with a big mold is shortbread. I love melt-in-your-mouth shortbread. And I usually make that for the holidays. Here's a recipe for gluten-free shortbread. So that's something that's on this site. Brown Bake Cookies, Cookie Art, and gluten-free shortbread You know, best of both worlds. And here's an example of the pan. And again, you make the dough and then you just, you know, pat it in the pan and it is just, you know, I'd almost rather have a piece of shortbread than a big piece of cake or pie. I really would. Here's one of the Etsy pages and you can see the molds. Some of these molds are $6.95. I swear I spent $20 for these molds. Way back. I think I really did. Now I'm going into a few images real quick, which is about displaying your cookies. And you know what? Once you make them and you're entertaining, there are different ways to display them on a countertop, on a table, and some of them are kind of quirky, but I like to get inspiration when I go to trade shows and I see they have the top designers at trade shows. This one was in Milan, where they're accessorizing their booths. Here we go. You know, I mean, here we have a ball of twine, we have two busts, you know, we have books, and then put a tray of cookies there and your cookies will seem like they're practically made of gold. So I've spoken before about oversized, bring some oversized items in, and then, you know, here you have to vases, bottles, put a tray of cookies in between. On the right you have a lantern, you know, certainly unexpected, but if you put it on a coffee table or someplace else and you sort of surround the cookie platter and you make an arrangement. You know, here I love the look of the tea towel, a tea towel with cookies, with cookie platters off the side of a table. I love that. Here's a birdcage. Don't ask me what the connection is, but it's interesting. A retro sort of— here's a very modern kitchen and a retro piece. And again, you put the food on the table and then it's actually a piece of art. It's an art installation kind of thing. You have books, you have cherubs, you have the modern oranges, the color pop. I like the idea of pomegranates. Around a tray of cookies. I even like the visual look of a carton of eggs, which you know are in the cookies. And here's some red, and then we have some old books here. So I like disparate things. I really, and I think it will elevate the feeling of the cookies and the look. So it's a little different idea. It's a little out of the box, but I think it's interesting, and that's my little show. What do you think, Chef?

That was great. I have to say, I've never used cookie molds like that. I'm not even a big one for cookie cutters, but I love the look of that round mold that you had. The pieces are coming out in triangles. I may have to get one of those and try because if a gluten-free cookie isn't the best tasting, that'll at least make it a little more interesting, too. That's a good thing.

Yeah, shortbread. That's— it's really shortbread. And the shortbread— here it is. And let me tell you, it is so good. And there's a recipe for gluten-free shortbread. You know, there's one for like authentic Scottish shortbread. So that's really where it originates from.

Now most of the molds, are they for shortbread?

No, they're for cookies.

So any kind of cookie.

Well, you know, because they're a mold, I like to stick to their recipes. Because I don't know how the cookie will react in, you know, in another recipe, how it will react with the mold.

But are they like basic sugar cookie kind of recipes or butter cookie recipes?

Yeah, yeah. Butter, sugar. Yes. Yeah, they are basic recipes. But I mean, look at, look at this. Look how adorable this is. And You know, and it has so much detail and you make the— you just crank them out and you build a collection and it's a lot of fun. There's also a hole at the top of them, you know, you can hang it from a window, you can hang it on a tree limb or anything, so it's fun.

It's pretty cool.

Yeah, okay.

Really, really nice and a good idea for some cookies and I love the idea of molds and you don't have to get a lot. But maybe you buy one this year or two this year, and then next year you might get another one, and then pretty soon you'll have a collection.

Exactly.

Very nice. So I creamed my butter and my sugar, and when you're making a cookie, you know, that's one thing you want to do. Now, one of the things I learned that I had never been aware of before, since I said I never was a professional baker and I never really learned how things work, and then people from King Arthur's Flour sent me this video, and it was— there were quite a few aha moments why my cakes failed.. But one of the things that came to mind was whenever you're working with butter and eggs, you want the eggs to be at room temperature along with the butter, along with anything cold that's going in there. Because number one, with the butter, if you put a cold egg in there, the butter is going to start to seize and get cold again, and it's not going to be smooth. So you want to make sure that, you know, you give yourself time to warm everything up. So now I'm just going to add in one egg to And it's really pretty simple. I creamed the butter for a while. You just want to make sure that this egg gets nice and mixed in, not overbeating it, and that it's thoroughly in. I did cut this recipe in half because I'm just making enough, and they are going to be gluten-free, believe it or not. I have some friends coming over for dinner, so for dessert we'll have cannolis and these cookies. So then after you've done all the wet ingredients the butter, the sugar, the egg. Now I'm going to add in some ricotta cheese. So the ricotta cheese is going to go in. And sometimes you get ricotta that is really, really wet. If that's the case, put it in a strainer for a while, let it drain, let some of the liquid come out of it. This was actually a pretty dry ricotta, so I didn't have to do too much to it. So now the ricotta that's mixed in. We're going to add in a little bit of lemon zest.

Oh yes, love that. Love anything with citrus.

Now I love Meyer lemons. I don't know if you ever use them.

You know, I haven't. I haven't.

They're a little sweeter and you can only see them certain times of the year. So I put some lemon juice, some lemon zest in here. We're going to whip this up with the ricotta.

So what— does it matter what speed you're using on the mixer?

Well, I'm not overmixing it. After I did cream my butter and sugar, I'm using a medium speed, but I'm just mixing it basically enough to get incorporated at this point. And I want to make sure I get everything off of my beaters. And you'll see I am using a beater bar and not a whip. Because you don't want to aerate it anymore, and the whip will really aerate it. You want to mix it, and you want to mix it well. So at this point, I've got in all the wet ingredients, the lemon, the eggs, the butter, and I had mixed previously. I have my flour and some baking powder and some salt in here. And at this point, all we're going to do is fold this into it, and I'm not even going to use the mixer. So let me disengage, then we can put it— let me change. Hopefully you can see what we're doing here. Oh, you know something, I think I hit my cameras. Ah, everything seems a little bit off today.

There we go.

Alright, so now I'm going to add in the flour. I'm just going to fold it in just enough till it all gets incorporated. And this, I said, now I've never made these with gluten-free flour, and— but they tell me that cookies are probably one of the easier things to make. And this is a King Arthur all-purpose blend. I did learn some things about baking with gluten-free flours and why— how to adjust some items. The biggest learning point for me was that they blend flours together because they try and make the flours come up to weigh as much as a regular flour would and have the same protein content as the regular flour would. So you try and mimic a regular flour by mixing flours together.

Oh, interesting. Huh.

That's really how they get it to work. Alright, so I'm actually gonna chill this for a little while because I think because of the gluten-free flour, this is a little bit looser than it should be. So I'm gonna let it chill before I bake. But at this point, what I would do when I was gonna bake them is just use a spoon or a scoop. And I actually have a little scoop that I'll scoop them out and put them on a baking sheet and bake them. And they're going to be like little balls, half balls of, uh, of dough. But I'm going to let this chill a little because this is just a little loose, and what will happen is they will run. And at this point they will run. I think it's because of the flour, so I'm going to let them chill. But I will take pictures of the finished product and let everybody see. All right, so that's basically your limit. And the recipe, I will post a recipe for that, and it is on my blog if you want to see it and the results of it with regular flour. So now what we're going to do is we're going to mix together. I'm going to get a whisk. We are going to mix together. Well, let me— before I do that, let me make glaze for the cookies. The glaze for the cookies is simply 10x sugar, lemon juice.

Mmm, lemon juice, love it.

And you know, I love lime juice in this too, and mixing up lime zest and lemon zest because this goes on the top of the cookies and the color then is really, really nice.

Oh, good thinking.

Yeah, this is basically really all a glaze is, and it will stiffen up as it sits. So when the cookies cool and you've got this all mixed up really, really well, you're simply going to either dip the cookie in, or probably easier on a tray, just to take a spoon and spoon some of this glaze over top of the cookie. And as it dries, it'll dry really nicely. You'll see some of the specks of the of the zest in there, and the color. That's why I said lime is really, really neat at this point, if you have lime, because then you see a little green speck. Or you could do orange as well. Any citrus works really well. And then I said just spoon it. So now that we've gone there, we're going to make cannoli. And I will share with you the secret of where most people go wrong with cannolis. Alright, so we've got ricotta cheese, and again, it's fairly heavy. It's not real, real wet, and if it's real, real wet to begin with, you're going to have problems with it. After that, we're going to put in some mascarpone. Now you can go without the mascarpone if you don't have any or just want to use ricotta, or you can put in a little cream cheese if you like. But what this does is it does solidify it a little bit more. And it adds a creaminess to it, so it's just not all the ricotta.

Yeah, I mean, that's really, you know, it's funny that I think the texture in cannolis is what people respond to, whether it's too heavy and too thick or whether it's a nice creamy, you know, that just flows. I think that has a lot to do with the experience of a cannoli, don't you?

Absolutely. Now, here's the secret, okay? The secret is that if you use sugar, you need to use superfine sugar, bar sugar. That's what you want to find. I can't find bar sugar down here, so what I do is I throw regular sugar into my food processor, and I pulse it until it becomes very fine. That is what you need, is a very fine sugar. Most recipes tell you to use 10X sugar, and 10X sugar will not work right. 10X sugar makes it weep, and the more you put in, the looser it gets. Wow.

What about that sugar that I see in the market that's— oh, it begins with a T. Tamarind? Tamarind? Tur— tea? It begins with a T. It's like a— I don't know. It's a more expensive sugar.

Oh, turbinado.

Yeah.

Now, you need regular sugar, but you need a very fine sugar, and bar sugar is something that is made to dissolve a lot faster in drinks, so it absorbs into the cheese. A lot faster, all right? And that's the big thing. And most recipes will tell you to use confectioner sugar or 10X sugar, and that's really where the problem comes. And I had an Italian grandmother tell me— and she could understand English, she couldn't speak much— and the only word I really got out of it was "stupido" because I wasn't listening. Finally it came into— you know, the translation was No 10x sugar. It was just the sugar. They used to grind it up by hand more than it was. That's the whole secret to making it really well. Now you can see it's still nice and thick. It's got a real nice body to it. I'm going to put in— I don't have a vanilla bean. I know I have them in here somewhere, and I couldn't find them. So I'm just going to use a little dash of real vanilla. To give it a little flavor. And you could flavor with a liqueur if you wanted to. You just have to watch you don't make it too wet. And then I put in some orange zest.

Oh, nice.

Okay, so we have—

I mean, you know, Amaretto, a little bit of Amaretto, a little, just a touch. Perfect. Yeah.

Okay, and then now we're going to add in— and I like mini chocolate chips. They just seem to really work really well rather than chunks of chocolate. I don't like to add them to the ends that you see all the time. But that's all there is to cannoli filling.

Wow.

Boom.

If I was a good wife, I would make that for my husband for his birthday, which is coming up, because every birthday he gets a cannoli cake. He loves He's a cannoli guy. He's like you in that respect.

I actually have a recipe for cannoli cake on my blog. I made a couple Christmases ago. It was called O Cannoli Night. What you want to do now is you have your shells. And then to make things a little different, if you really want to, what I have here is some melted chocolate.

Oh, that is different.

I'm gonna show you what I'm gonna do. We have some melted chocolate. Now I'm gonna take a cannoli shell, and you can just kind of spoon it or dip it if you want to, roll it around a little bit, get a little bit of chocolate on the outside. And then you're going to want to let it set before you fill them. But you can do this with dark chocolate, white chocolate, then you want to take some pistachio.

Oh boy, we have a lot of dimensions here, a lot of flavor dimensions.

You never do the whole thing, you just want to do the end.. You want to just give them a little taste of something. All right, so you can make some plain, but everybody always likes chocolate. Can't go wrong with chocolate dipping. And I don't know if you ever thought about it too, but we used to take those pretzel rods that they sell at the grocery store.

Yeah.

And dip them in chocolate. And then you can also— and they make really nice when people come over, little snacks for them to have along with cookies. And you can do pistachios on them, you can do sprinkles on them.

That's so great. You know, my favorite thing in the world is chocolate-covered pretzels.

Oh yeah, everybody loves them.

Yeah, favorite thing in the world.

So it's really that simple. Now, if you want to leave some plain, you know, and I always will too, I won't put chocolate on the wall. I mean, there is chocolate in them, so you're gonna get it. But the old-fashioned way is to fill them with a spoon. So you would just take a spoon. You can of course put it in a pastry bag if you like. And if you were filling more than a dozen, I would recommend a pastry bag simply because it'll take forever otherwise. And sometimes with a spoon you have to make sure you really getting them all the way down the center. Pasty bag kind of fills it really, really easily. And then you get that nice little tip at the end. Now, I see them— you see in the stores, you see people are always like coating the ends with chocolate. I think that's a little bit of an overkill for me at that point. I like chocolate, but I don't want them to have so much on it. That, you know, when I bite into it, all I taste is chocolate chips.

Yeah. And, you know, don't you think the size of the cannoli shell is like— I don't like gigantic ones. It can be too much. I like, you know, small to medium. Those look like, you know, sort of like a medium size. Yeah.

Not real big. It's not overpowering. The small ones are really nice. Parties because people can just try one. A lot of people don't know what cannolis are, and they think they're supposed to be really sweet, and they're not. They eat it, and then they go, "Oh my God, what the heck was that?" See, if they're small, then you can have 3 of them.

I mean, it's December, and you have permission to eat sweets.

Cannolis are that simple. And then I always keep these little shakers around with powdered sugar. So then I can hit them with a little powdered sugar like that. Very nice. And I have a little cocoa, or you can hit them with a little cinnamon. Again, it's pretty much just for appearance. And you have your canolis finished.

I love that. I love, I love showing it different different finishes, you know, different— and it's almost like there's an assortment of different types, especially if you're making a lot. Yes. If you're making many, then split it up into different types just visually.

And you can add a little cocoa powder to the cannoli filling if you want to and give it a little chocolate flavor. It's just you do have to be careful when you're putting more powders in. Because the mentality would be that the powders you're putting in are going to make them thicker and sturdier, when in fact it breaks— it seems to break down the ricotta and it makes it looser and wetter. And, you know, I struggle with this for a long time and just never really was able to figure it out. The colder it is, like if you put this in and let it get really nice and ice cold, it'll firm up a little bit more for you, but not a whole lot. So You want to be careful with it.

Yeah, there seems to be such a nuance in how it, you know, how you want it. I mean, you can have it different ways.

Oh yeah.

But yeah, this looks terrific.

Like you said, the Amaretto, if you want to add that instead of the vanilla, it'll give it a little undertone of flavor, a little Kahlúa instead, you know, it'll give it that little undertone flavor just to give it a difference.

Yeah, and see, imagine that now with an arrangement of, you know, beautiful things, or beautiful vases, or pottery, or fruit, big, you know, it just elevates the, you know, the presentation, really elevates the presentation.

And, you know, and cannolis aren't something you see every day too, and they are easy, and almost most grocery stores do sell the shells. You look for Ferraro brand or another Italian brand. And if they don't sell them— like, I opened up mine, I told you, and they were not good. I had unfortunately opened the plastic, put them back in the box, and I thought it was a sealed box, which it was not. So they've been around for a while. So I ran to Publix, and they don't sell them, but the bakery sells cannolis. So once I figured out what to charge me for the shells, they were very nice about selling me some canoli shells. They had no problem. I've done that before when I was up east, up north with Acme. If I didn't have them, I'd run over there, and they'd sell me mini shells or something. If you can't find them, ask your grocery store if they sell canolis, if they'll sell you a few shells.

It's like going to the pizza place and buying the dough.

Right.

Good idea.

Yeah. That's what I have for today. It's getting close to Christmas. I will post pictures of the cookies when they come out. If you want to check, I'll post them on Google+ as well so you can see them and with the recipe. That's what I have for today, Susan.

It looks great, Chef. Thank you so much. Thanks for all the variation. It's really exciting.

Great. I'm glad everyone liked it. Thanks for coming today, Around the Kitchen Table. Christmas is around the corner. We'll see you next week. I think next week we'll talk about some Christmas and New Year's dinners, some possibilities. We'll go over a few things for that that might, might be nice on your table.

Sounds good.

Alright, so have a great day and we'll see you soon around your kitchen table.