Dessert from Sicily: homemade cannoli

This is one Italian dessert recipe which, when made at home, will certainly impress your guests, and can be considered the icing on the cake of your Italian Christmas dinner.
Like any pastry, getting this part right is the trick, after which you if get over that hurdle, you can fill it with what you damn well like…! Well, not exactly.

Cannoli are a traditional Sicilian pastry filled with ricotta, which is also the base of Sicily’s famous cassata dessert.

Ingredients for the shell: 300 grams of sieved flour, 10 grams of caster sugar, half a glass of Marsala fortified wine, a pinch of salt, icing sugar and olive oil.
Ingredients for the filling: 500 grams of fresh ricotta, 200 grams of icing sugar, 100 grams of cubed candied fruit, 100 grams of dark chocolate flakes, one tiny packet of vanilla powder (less than a teaspoon), a pinch of powdered cinnamon, milk as needed.

To prepare the shells, you need to place the sifted flour in a little mountain, make a crater and pour in the Marsala.
Add the sugar and a pinch of salt, and knead until you get a consistent, almost solid mixture.

Form a large ball, wrap in a cloth and leave to rest for two hours.
After resting, roll out the pastry to a maximum of four millimetres thick and cut into rectangles of 10 cm down one side.
Using a metal cylinder to form the shape, roll each rectangle from one opposite corner to the other to create a hollow shell.
Heat the oil in a pan and place each shell in the pan, tossing them until well cooked, and allowing the oil to drain off a little at the end of the cooking.
You’re now ready to fill the cannoli.
Create the filling by mixing the ricotta, icing sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, candied fruit, chocolate and a couple of drops of milk together.
Fill the canoli and dust with a little icing sugar as a finishing touch.
A sweet Marsala is probably the best food-wine match with your canoli.