Fruit Mince Slice

Christmas is fast approaching. I've been trying my hardest to get lots of Christmas baking done this month, and am only half succeeding. My mini gingerbread houses are still standing, I haven't managed to bring myself to tear them down yet. I love fruit mince pies during this time of the year. Or any time of the year really. In fact, I planned to make this fruit mince slice for Christmas in July, but by the time I got around to it, it was the end of July and there wasn't really much point. So I saved it up for the real thing, and shared it with my Mum, who loves fruit mince pies as much as me.

This fruit mince slice is a slightly different to a mince pie, for one thing it's much easier to make and has a higher ratio of filling to pastry. I usually prefer thing since I normally find the pastry in some mince pies a little too thick for the amount of filling they have. This one has just the right amount, and the pastry is a perfect, butter shortbread. And have you noticed that things are just a little bit more fun in slice form? The recipe allows you to use jars of fruit mince if you can't be bothered making your own from scratch, but I would definitely recommend making your own, just because the supermarket stuff can be a little bland. I was forced to use up the jar I bought at the end of July, and my Mum was wishing that my slice tasted a little more boozy, so maybe I should have mixed in a little brandy with the bottled fruit mince to make it less bland. But it still had plenty of flavour thanks to that lovely pastry and the addition of glace ginger and prunes.

Just because fruit mince pastries are usually reserved for Christmas time, don't let that stop you from making this slice any time of the year. I think it's fabulous, and would happily make it again, much sooner than Christmas! Mum liked it enough that she took a whole container of it back to Malaysia with her and is eating a slice a day :)

Fruit Mince Slice
(from the Essential Baking Cookbook)
2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup icing sugar
185g cold unsalted butter, cubed
1 egg
410g fruit mince (jar or homemade)
150g pitted prunes, choppled
100g glace ginger, chopped
1 egg, lightly beated
icing sugar to dust

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C. Lightly grease a shallow 28x18cm tin and line the base with baking paper, leaving the paper hanging over the two long sides. This makes it easy to lift the cooked slice out of the tin.

Sift the flour and icing sugar into a large bowl. Rube in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Make a well in the centre and add the egg. Mix with a flat bladed knife, using a cutting action, until the mixture comes together. Turn onto a lightly floured sugar and press together until smooth (the mixture is very soft, so handle it very lightly or it will become tough).

Divide the dough in half and press one portion into the tin. Bake for 10 minutes, then leave to cool.

Roll the remaining pastry out on a piece of baking paper and refrigerate for 15 minutes. Spread the fruit mince evenly over the baked pastry, topping with prunes and ginger.

Cut the rolled pastry into this strip with a sharf knice or fluted pastry wheel. Arrange on top of the fruit in a diagonal lattice pattern. Brush with beaten egg.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until golden. Cool in the tin, then life out using the paper as handles and cut into squares or fingers.

Serve dusted with icing sugar. This slice can be kept for us to four days if stored in an airtight container in a cool place, or in the refrigerator.

Banana Cake & Passionfruit Cream Cheese Icing

A simple recipe to get us through the middle of the week. Hands up who likes banana cake?! Or banana bread? Let's face it, banana bread is banana cake. I remember my first semester of uni, where every early morning physics lectures was preceeded by a huge mocha and a piece of toasted banana bread slathered with butter. I can't believe what a fatty I was. These days I still indulge in banana bread every now and then (without the copious amounts of butter), and whenever I feel like banana cake at home I always turn to my trusty Stephanie Alexander recipe from The Cook's Companion.

I've decided to add this recipe to the 'Foolproof' category, because it has never failed me no matter how many times I have done it, and no matter what kind of weird things I add to it. This time I happened to make it for Simon's birthday picnic, pairing it with this amazing passionfruit cream cheese icing which I've whipped up a couple times. Banana cake with passionfruit is a winner of a combination that I first tried years ago thanks to a birthday cake we bought my Mum from Simmone Logue, it beats plain cream cheese icing any day. I decided to keep it simple for Simon's picnic, mostly because I was super lazy, so I split the batter into half and baked them as thin cake slices rather than a full sized cake and slathered the top with the icing. Unfortunately for my poor cake was not prepared for the intensely humid 40+ degree weather at centennial park that day, and it pretty much collapsed on itself. I think the moisture from the cream cheese seeped into the cake, turning it into mush. Taking it home and refrigerating it didn't help, the whole thing went a bit strange textured. So I guess this cake is foolproof until you decide to spend the afternoon in oven-like conditions! But don't let my bad luck deter you, this cake is normally super moist and packed full of banana flavoured goodness.

Foolproof Banana Cake with Passionfruit Cream Cheese Icing
(Simple banana cake recipe from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion)
For the banana cake:
125g softened unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed ripe banana (approx 2 large bananas or 2-3 medium bananas)
few drops pure vanilla
250g plain flour
1tsp bicarb soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1/2 cup buttermilk (or 1/2cup milk + 1 tsp lemon juice)

For the passionfruit cream cheese icing:
250g cream cheese, softened
1/4 lemon, juiced
75g icing sugar
125g unsalted butter, melted
3 passionfruit

Butter and flour a 20 cm square cake tin then line the base with baking paper (or two if you want to make thin cake slices rather than a full cake). Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Bean in eggs, banana and vanilla. Sift dry ingredients and add to mixture, alternating with buttermilk. Spoon into tin and bake for 45 minutes or until cake tests clean. Cool cake in its tin on a wire rack for a few minutes before turning out.

Place cream cheese in a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer until smooth. Sift icing sugar into bowl. Add butter & lemon juice and then beat together until well combined. The mixture should be quite shiny. Add pulp from passionfruit to the icing and fold to combine. Spread liberally over the cooled banana cake. Can be stored in the refrigerator in an air tight container.

Mini Gingerbread Houses

I'm a messy, disorganised person. I was meant to do Christmas in July baking, and before I knew it we were already in August. I planned all sorts of baking for Halloween, and *whoosh*, that passed by in a flash. I was determined, crazy determined to be more organised for Christmas. I kinda love Christmas. I'm not religious, and my family haven't done Christmas presents since we were little, but I love the warm family joy that the holiday season brings, and all the indulgent eating that I associate with it. Back in Malaysia, Mum always cooks a turkey and Dad carves it. Here in Sydney, I've been lucky enough to be included in A's family Christmases, which are different but kind of the same. And once again I seem to be leaving my Christmas shopping until the very last minute. But at least I've gotten off my lazy bum and started my Christmas baking!

So since I'm a messy, disorganised baker, I decided to start with something simple and make it even simpler. I love gingerbread houses, and gingerbread in general. Gingerbread houses always make me think of reading Enid Blyton books when I was young, about the Land of Candy in the Faraway Tree series, with the chocolate lamp poles and peppermint grass. Part of the fun of gingerbread houses is running around the lolly aisle in the supermarket, trying to figure out what you can use to construct/decorate your house.

These little gingerbread houses are perfect to make with the kids. The gingerbread recipe is a simple recipe I use for gingerbread men, it is really easy to roll out and cut. My favourite thing about the recipe is that it uses up all egg-whites and yolks, so you don't have any random egg bits leftover. And since these are very basic, baby-sized houses, you don't have to worry about any complicated templates or construction. I just used a metal ruler and a sharp knife to figure out the shapes I needed for my house (after testing it with some cardboard first). The best thing is you get lots of little houses out of the dough, so you can decorate each of them however you want, and you don't need to be super neat or precise about any of it.

Peppermint tiled roofs and chocolate biscuit log walls

Unfortunately I picked a sweaty hot day to make these (right before a big bout of cold weather hit Sydney), so I was cranky and in a rush to get them done. By the end of it, I was just slopping royal icing on everything, so they aren't the prettiest looking gingerbread houses I could have come up with. But the fact that I could put these together so easily and with so little effort shows what a great afternoon project they would be for anyone. Any now they are sitting prettily in my living room, making the whole place smell lovely. I don't think I have the heart to eat them!

Miniature Gingerbread Houses
(makes approx 4 small houses)
For the gingerbread:
1/2 cup tightly packed brown sugar
125g unsalted butter, softened
2 egg yolks
2 1/2 cups plain flour
3/4 tsp bicarb soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp golden syrup
For the royal icing:
2 large egg whites
3 cups icing sugar

For the decorations:
Whatever you want! I used mini marshmallows, licorice allsorts, mush sticks, mini candy canes, Chomp bars, malt sticks, mini skittles, peppermints and multi-coloured cachous.

Whisk flour, bicarb, ginger and cinnamon in a separate bowl and stir to combine. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Cream butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Continue beating, adding one egg yolk at a time until well combined. Add dry ingredients and golden syrup and stir together until it starts to come together.

Use your hands to combine and knead into a smooth dough. It will be quite a crumbly mixture, but don't worry, it will moisten up when it is rolled out. If the mixture is too sticky for your liking, lightly dust with flour and knead a bit more. Split the dough into 4-5 balls. Take one of the dough balls and place on a sheet of greaseproof paper that has been lightly dusted with flour. Place another sheet of greaseproof paper on top and roll the dough between the sheets of paper using a rolling pin to a thickness of about 4-5 mm.

Cut out the shapes you need to make the houses. Each house needs 3 pairs of shapes, 6 pieces in total. The dough should give you enough for 4 houses if you use the dimensions given, with some extra scraps leftover in case you need to make extra (which you might! if any burn or get dropped, but this dough doesn't seem to have any issues with cracking). Here is what you need to cut out for a single house
- 2 side walls: 5cm x 8cm rectangles
- 2 roof pieces: 5cm x 9cm rectangles
- 2 front walls: 5cm x 5cm squares with an isosceles triangle connected on top with a height of 3cm (see photo below), i.e. 5cm sides with a 8cm point down the middle.

Lay the cutouts on a lined baking sheet. The dough may crack when you pick it up but just gently press it back together, the cracks will not show after it is baked. Bake for 10 mins or until the cookies are browned. Keep an eye on them, they burn quickly after they are ready. They will be soft when you first remove them from the oven, so either leave them on the baking sheet (as long as it is lined with baking paper), or slide them gently on to a wire rack to cool completely.

Prepare the royal icing 'cement'; use half the ingredients, 1 egg white, and beat with an electric mixer until it reaches soft peaks, continue beating while gradually adding 1.5 cups of the icing sugar. The mixture should become stiff and shiny. This icing will be used for the construction of the houses, keep the other half of the ingredients for decorating the exteriors.

Construct the base of the house by sticking the four wall pieces together as shown below. You could be super neat and use a piping bag to place the royal icing along each side edge of the pieces, but I was lazy and just dipped both sides of each biscuit into the icing and stuck them together.

Place on a sheet of foil or baking paper to let the icing harden. When it is set enough that you can gently pick up the whole base without it collapsing, use a spoon or piping bag to spread icing over all the top edges of the base and cement the roof to the top. Use more icing to join the two roof pieces together at the very top. You now have your basic house ready for decorating, set it aside to set for about 20-30 mins, and construct all your other houses.

Now the fun part, the decorating. You can do whatever you want here, but I'll tell you what I did in case you're curious. I first made up more royal icing with the leftover eggwhite and 1.5 cups of icing sugar I had left, and used that to stick windows and doors onto the walls of the houses. I used licorice allsorts for the windows, and the curved tops of candy canes for the doors. Some of the houses I used malt sticks to look like log walls. I was also lucky enough to snag some pretty Christmas sugar decorations that I could stick on.

Once the bottom of the house was finished, I completed the roof. Some of them were just slathered with lots of the royal icing to make them look like snow-topped roofs, and decorated with some cachous. I also sliced a Chomp bar at a diagonal to stick on top of the snow covered roof to look like a chimney. You could use any skinny chocolate bar for this, like a kitkat. Mini marshmallows skewered on a bent piece of a paperclip inserted into the top of the chimney make some very cute puffs of smoke :)

The ones that didn't have plain roofs, I covered with icing sugar and then used flat peppermint lollies as white roof tiles. You could also use your leftover scraps of gingerbread cookie dough to make little gingerbread tiles to stick into the roof. I then placed my houses on a flat board or cake stand, covered with foil and dusted with lots of icing sugar or flour for 'snow' and then cemented the houses to the bottom with more royal icing. A little bit of cocoa powder worked great as a cleared dirth path in the white snow. These gingerbread houses should last at least a week, if you can stop yourself from nibbling on them!

Strawberry Chocolate Chip Cupcakes, for a celebration

A few weeks ago my brother came up to me with an idea. He was planning, plotting, scheming. His goal; a thoughtful, romantic and very personal proposal for his girlfriend. It would be tricky, the ring was already bought, she knew it was coming. If he just randomly brought her to some beautiful location out of the blue it would be so obvious what was happening. So he decided to do it while my parents were here. Which complicated things even more, he didn't want to do it in front of all of us, it had to be private. The final plan; an early morning family picnic at a nearby park, which so happened to be the place where he first gave her flowers. My Mum cooked all sorts of delicious things including pumpkin kuih and curry puffs. Not your usual picnic food, but so much better! And I was assigned the task of making some celebratory cupcakes. 'Just make them pink', he requested. Easy!

I could have gone mental with it, made some crazy complicated cakes. But in the end I kept it simple. It was a 40 degree day when I was baking these, and it had only cooled to about 32 by the evening. So I was sweltering in front of my oven, and then fumbling with a pair of tweezers to get those little sugar hearts onto the personalised cupcakes. But it was worth the effort.

Excuse the terrible photos, night baking and a broken camera means that most of my photos will look like this for a while. In case you don't already know, I take all my photos with a pretty dodgy point and shoot, no DSLRs here. Anyway back to the cakes - I was just going to make plain strawberry cupcakes, but they reminded me a little too much of the strawberry mousse cupcakes I did a while back (which would have been good for this if it hadn't been so hot), so I decided to throw in some choc chips (dark chocolate ones since my brother wasn't a fan of white chocolate). The bitter chocolate was a little strong but I made sure there was tons of strawberry flavour in the smooth icing so that it balanced out the chocolate. The fresh strawberry puree in the cake makes it extra moist, and it's even better when you eat them straight out of the oven while the chocolate is still gooey.

The happy couple wandered off, my brother 'innocently' taking her for a walk around the park. They took a while for their private moment, in the meantime A & I greedily tucked into my Mum's awesome curry puffs. The cupcakes were hidden in a tupperware, ready to be revealed with the pink champagne.

They finally returned, congratulations were given and champagne was poured. The cupcakes were revealed to the very excited and pleased couple and some were munched on straight away.

I was pretty happy with how they turned out, I liked the simplicity of the smooth icing decoration, which had a little leftover cream cheese to make it extra moist. Next time I might just make a stiffer buttercream to pipe over the top. The most important thing was that they loved them and ate all of them up. And they tasted really, really good. Even better than my usual cupcakes because they were so moist!

Strawberry Chocolate Chip Cupcakes
(adapted from my foolproof cupcake recipe)
For the cake:
1/2 cup strawberry puree (approx 1/2 punnet strawberries, blended)
2 large eggs
125g unsalted butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
225g self-raising flour
1/4 tsp vanilla bean paste/vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips (I prefer white choc, but this time I used dark choc for my brother)

For the icing:
100g cream cheese,softened
40g butter, softened
200g icing sugar, sifted
1 tbsp strawberry puree
Optional: Few drops of strawberry extract, pink food colouring, sugar flowers/sprinkles to decorate

Wash and clean strawberries. In a food processor or blender, puree strawberries until any large lumps are broken down. Preheat oven to 180C and line a cupcake tray with paper cases.Cream butter and sugar together using an electric beater until light and smooth. Add eggs at a time and beat in well.

Add the puree and flour and quickly mix until combined, avoid overbeating the flour. Fold in chocolate chips and then spoon mixture into cupcake cases, about 1/2 full.

It will take 15-20 minutes to bake. The top should be golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. (This cake will be moister than the plain cupcake recipe due to the strawberry puree). Remove cupcakes from tray and cool completely on a wire rack.

Using electric beaters, beat softened cream cheese and butter until it is smooth. Gradually add sifted icing sugar while beating at high speed, alternating with the strawberry puree. If you wish the consistency to be stiffer, add more icing sugar. If your strawberries aren't super ripe, you can add more food colouring and strawberry extract to enhance the flavour and appearance. I wanted my icing to be quite flat and smooth so that I could decorate over the top of it, so I added more strawberry puree to make it less viscous.

Decorate cupcakes however you like! Easiest thing to do is to top with sugar flowers or candied violets.

Congratulations!

Cherry Brulee Cannoli Cups - Daring Bakers Nov 2009

I have to admit something. I have loved being a part of Daring Bakers so far, but I was feeling a little burnt out after last month. I was feeling lazy. And uninspired. Mostly lazy. So I dragged my feet when it came to finishing this month's challenge, and even though what I came up with was neither spectacular and kind of ugly, I couldn't bring myself to give it another go. The 40 degree weather didn't help things. And November was a busy, busy month for me, with my birthday and many others to celebrate. But I still wanted to participate this month, because I've never made cannoli before, and I was ready to conquer my fear of the deep fryer.

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.

If I were to do this challenge again, there's no way I would have made these darned cannoli cups. There were a pain in the bum to get into a nice shape, and the whole time I was making these I kept thinking they looked really, really ugly. But it wasn't all bad, they tasted SO amazingly good, and I got to use some of the fabulous birthday presents I got, including Leona and Lisa's kitchen appliances, Betty's amazingly gorgeous tea cake stand and the blowtorch that A got me (he knows me far too well). (Don't worry Karen, I'll be using your present very soon!) It was very exciting to use the blowtorch for the first time, the whole idea for these was inspired by the amazing brulee tarts that they sell at Bourke St Bakery. That crunchy toffeed top cracks nicely and gives way to a creamy ricotta, vanilla and fresh cherry filling. It's the start of cherry season in Australia, one of my favourite fruits. It always reminds me of Christmas, a very Aussie Christmas.

Luck was on my side it seems, I walked into my local grocers to be greeted with the sad sight of a half empty tray of dead looking cherries. I was staring at it despondently when one of the guys working there goes to me "if you wait here for a minute, I'll go get you a fresh new batch!". How nice is that?! So before he even put it on the shelf, he opened up a huge bag of delicious cherries and let me have first pick. I decided to get more than I needed so I could eat plenty of them as I was baking (err, deep frying I mean).

Things did not go quite so smoothly after that. I had trouble figuring out how I would make my cannoli cups. Like big ugly warts rather than nicely shaped cups. In hindsight I should have attempted baking them instead of deep frying, but I really wanted those distinctive blisters on the side of my cups. I decided to use some steel cookie cutters to use as moulds, which I wrapped circles of the dough around. It was tough to get this to work. The dough kept expanding and falling off the moulds, meaning that it just turned into a flat, ugly thing as soon as it hit the oil. Also I wasn't rolling my dough thin enough, so it wasn't blistering and was going soggy. When I finally got the thickness right, I also read the hints properly (told you I was feeling lazy this month) and remembered to dock the bottom of my cups to stop them from ballooning up in the oil. I still had to do the cups one at a time which was a pain, but at least they were in some sort of shape that could hold a filling.

The filling was simple, but delicious. I upped the amount of vanilla, and made sure there were lots of cherries throughout. It was hard to torch the tops of the cups without burning the edges of the cannoli, so unfortunately they got even uglier. But we ate them quickly, before the cups got soggy and they tasted brilliant. The cherry, vanilla and ricotta combination is a winner and I would love to use it in a tart. The caramelised, crunchy tops were heaven, I will have to restrain from torching every single thing I bake from now on haha!

In an effort to hide some of the ugliness, I topped these cups with vanilla persian fairy floss, I hve two huge bags of it after my Mum bought me some when she saw it in a random gourmet store. I don't really think it made it any less ugly, but it was a good way to use up some of the fairy floss :)

I would definitely like to try some traditional cannoli tubes sometime in the future, but foolishly attempting these cups was a fun experience. Thank you so much for being such an awesome host Lisa Michele! It was great seeing all the help and support you were giving on the DB forums :)

Lidisano’s Cannoli
(Makes 22-24 4-inch cannoli)

For the cannoli shells:
2 cups (250 grams/16 ounces) all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons(28 grams/1 ounce) sugar
1 teaspoon (5 grams/0.06 ounces) unsweetened baking cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon (1.15 grams/0.04 ounces) ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon (approx. 3 grams/0.11 ounces) salt
3 tablespoons (42 grams/1.5 ounces) vegetable or olive oil
1 teaspoon (5 grams/0.18 ounces) white wine vinegar
Approximately 1/2 cup (approx. 59 grams/approx. 4 fluid ounces/approx. 125 ml) sweet Marsala or any white or red wine you have on hand
1 large egg, separated (you will need the egg white but not the yolk)
Vegetable or any neutral oil for frying – about 2 quarts (8 cups/approx. 2 litres)
1/2 cup (approx. 62 grams/2 ounces) toasted, chopped pistachio nuts, mini chocolate chips/grated chocolate and/or candied or plain zests, fruits etc.. for garnish
Confectioners' sugar

Note - If you want a chocolate cannoli dough, substitute a few tablespoons of the flour (about 25%) with a few tablespoons of dark, unsweetened cocoa powder (Dutch process) and a little more wine until you have a workable dough

For my cherry ricotta filling:
500g ricotta cheese, drained
80g confectioner’s sugar, (more or less, depending on how sweet you want it), sifted
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract/paste or the beans from two vanilla beans
1 1/2 cups fresh cherries, diced
Caster sugar
Optional: Vanilla pashmak, extra fresh cherries

I have adjusted the recipe to how show how I made my silly cups, but if you want the original method, check Lisa Michele's blog for her DB post.

1. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer or food processor, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, and salt. Stir in the oil, vinegar, and enough of the wine to make a soft dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and well blended, about 2 minutes. Shape the dough into a ball. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest in the fridge from 2 hours to overnight.

2. Cut the dough into two pieces. Keep the remaining dough covered while you work. Lightly flour a large cutting or pastry board and roll the dough until super thin, about 1/16 to 1/8” thick (An area of about 13 inches by 18 inches should give you that). Cut out 3 to 5-inch circles (3-inch – small/medium; 4-inch – medium/large; 5-inch;- large. Your choice). Roll the cut out circle (I kept it a circle for the cannoli cups), rolling it larger and thinner if it's shrunk a little. Dock the centre of the dough, the area that will be used as the base of the cup, so that it doesn't balloon up when you place it in the hot oil

3. Oil the outside of the moulds you will use for your cups (I used my stainless steel cookie cutters) (You only have to do this once). I used my hand to gentlywrap a dough circle around the bottom of the cookie cutter.

4. In a deep heavy saucepan, pour enough oil to reach a depth of 3 inches, or if using an electric deep-fryer, follow the manufacturer's directions. Heat the oil to 350-375°F (190 °C) on a deep fry thermometer, or until a small piece of the dough or bread cube placed in the oil sizzles and browns in 1 minute. Have ready a tray or sheet pan lined with paper towels or paper bags. I had a lot of trouble maintaining my oil around the 360°F mark since I have stupid electric coils, so my cups browned very quickly.

5. Carefully lower a cannoli cup into the hot oil. Fry the shell until golden, about 2 minutes, turning them so that they brown evenly.

6. Lift a cannoli cup with a wire skimmer or large slotted spoon, out of the oil. Using tongs, grasp the cannoli cup upside down to drain any oil. Very carefully remove the cup with the open sides straight down so that the oil flows back into the pan. Place the cup on paper towels or bags to drain. Repeat with the remaining cups. While they are still hot, grasp the tubes with a potholder and pull the cannoli shells off the tubes with a pair of tongs, or with your hand protected by an oven mitt or towel. Let the shells cool completely on the paper towels. Place shells on cooling rack until ready to fill.

7. Repeat making and frying the shells with the remaining dough. If you are reusing the cannoli cup mould, let them cool before wrapping them in the dough.

8. Line a strainer with cheesecloth. Place the ricotta in the strainer over a bowl, and cover with plastic wrap and a towel. Weight it down with a heavy can, and let the ricotta drain in the refrigerator for several hours to overnight.

9. Remove cherry stems and pits, and chop up into small pieces.

10. In a bowl with electric mixer, beat ricotta until smooth and creamy. Beat in confectioner’s sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and blend until smooth. Fold in the cherries gently.

11. When ready to serve, either pipe or use a small teaspoon to fill your cannoli cups. Smooth the top of the filling with the back of a spoon or a spatula.

12. Sprinkle a generous layer of caster sugar over the top of the filling. Use a blowtorch to caramelise the sugar, creating a crunchy toffee top for each. Try to avoid burning the edges of the cannoli cups.

Optional: Top with vanilla fairy floss and a fresh cherry.