La Cucina Italiana: Dolci!

It was our final day of Italian cooking, and the week had gone by quickly. Day 5 of "La Cucina Italiana" called for my favorite course...dessert!! Or dolci!
On the dessert menu for the day was cannolis, a hazelnut sponge cake, and a delicious passover pie. All traditional Italian desserts!




I was ever so luckily placed in the cannoli making group, which was exciting because I simply ADORE cannolis. The shells were store bought, because we had a lot of dessert to make and making those from scratch would probably add another 3 hours to our day. So we stuck with making just the cannoli filling, which was surprisingly incredibly easy!
It had ricotta cheese, powdered sugar, chopped toasted almonds, little chocolate chips, almond extract, and orange zest (a very good addition!) All we had to do was simply mix the ingredients together in a large bowl and refrigerate it for about 30 mins. 
(we really wanted to just eat it alone, with a spoon....)

Filling the shells was the fun part. The filling was in a ziplock bag, and all we did was cut a hole in the corner and squeeze it in, just like the professional pastry chefs we really are. 

look at these beauties!!

At the same time, the rest of the group was busy at work, making meringues and crusts for the pie, and chopping hazelnuts for the spongecake. 

preparing the spongecakes, and pies ready to bake

The end to our long day of baking with a nice lunch in the courtyard, with tons of bread, meat, and leftovers! Pasta, soup, sauce, pesto, ham....and then we dug into dessert! Everything turned out wonderfully. 

It was a fun week...I'd definitely do it again!