Nona's Cannoli Filling

As a third generation Italian-American, cannoli have always been the ending highlight to every Thanksgiving, Christmas, graduation, wedding, anniversary, or any other celebrated holiday or family get-together. Cannoli are Sicilian pastry desserts that were historically prepared during Carnevale season. Cannoli consist of tube-shaped shells of fried pastry dough, filled with a sweet, creamy filling usually containing ricotta cheese (and in less traditional, but more modern American versions, marscapone). They range in size from "cannulicchi," no bigger than a finger, to the fist-sized proportions typically found just south of Palermo, Sicily.

When my Nona passed away suddenly in January, we were surprised to be greeted by her doctor at the funeral home. He, too, had been caught off guard by her sudden passing, and had shared the news with his family, including his teenage son. In his house, she was known at "the cannoli lady." Every Christmas, we discovered, Nona had also made her doctor's family a wax paper-lined tin of homemade cannoli that she delivered to his office. His son was worried: "Who would make them cannoli now that 'the cannoli lady' had passed?"

Like many families, recipes had been passed down from generation to generation to my Nona through watchful eyes and practice... not written down, and surely not following any conventional measuring system. My mom worried herself as she had not had the chance to learn how to make cannoli from her mother and my Nona.

It was then much to our surprise that two weeks later we stumbled upon an old wooden recipe box. In between recipes clipped from magazines, tattered and faded from 20 plus years of life, we found a yellowed 3x5 index card with the scribblings of my Nona's (and Big Nona's) cannoli filling. Like many versions with which Americans are most familiar, Nona's recipe tends to involve variations on the original concept (my only explanation for the vanilla pudding). This is possibly due to adaptations made by Italians who moved to the United States in the 1900s and discovered limited availability of certain ingredients, especially later during the Great Depression, like my Big Nona and Nona.