A Trip to Sicily: For the Cannoli

All semester long myself and my two friends Marissa and Ariana have talked endlessly about going to Sicily. After the first weekend in Sorrento, we feel in love with the south and always talked of how we wished we could find the time to go. However, our main longing for Sicily stemmed for our shared love of the classic Italian pastry cannoli. Last week it seemed as though our dream of eating real Sicilian cannoli would not come to fruition, and we would leave Italy without tasting the decadent pastry. However, the stars aligned for us. After finding some reasonably priced airfare and a four star hotel with a two star price, we impulsively made our reservations and hopped on our plane to the southern most region of Italy.

Since we only had about 36 hours in Sicily, we decided to stay in the ancient city of Palermo. It is a beautiful port city with sapphire water, rugged and speckled mountains, and buildings colored of ancient shades of sandy yellow, and rust. The city itself is beautiful (although some streets are nicer than others) and from the moment we landed in Palermo we knew we had made a great last minute decision. 

The first thing we did in the city was take a two mile walk to the most famous pastry shop, Pasticceria Cappello, in the city. There, we ordered steaming cappuccinos and cannoli. The cannoli were traditionally garnished with a sliver of candied orange peel, and had classic golden brown shells stuffed with ricotta cream. Cannoli are very simple to make; however, they are not all made the same. These cannoli were exceptional.

The shells were the perfectly fried, light, crisp, with pockets of air, and the exterior had a brown color I can only liken with the exterior of a really good wheat loaf. That shade of brown that perfectly walks the tight rope along the line of over done and perfect. The shells were my favorite part of this cannoli and validated our last minute trip upon first taste.

These cannoli were classically stuffed with ricotta cheese and tiny chocolate chips. The filling is buttermilk white, and packed with homemade Sicilian ricotta cheese which is creamy, fluffy, and decadent. The chocolate chips added the perfect pop of texture and some bitterness which balanced out the heavy cheese. Also, the orange peel candy was the perfect garnish as it added an element of citrus that lightened up the pastry and made it much less dense.

All in all, these cannoli were excellent and we definitely sampled the best cannoli of the trip at our first stop. However, I have to give a special shout out to the cannoli at Casa Stagnitta. They were almost as good as Pasticceria Cappello, in fact I think they’re ricotta filling may have edged them out. But, ultimately, the shells at Cappello were so good, I think it may be impossible for anyone to truly beat them.

Beyond eating cannoli in Sicily we sampled many other local dishes and street foods that made our time enjoyable. However good the cannoli were, the best part of the trip was relaxing in a new city with two really great people. We were all sad when our day trip came to an end, but our dreams had been completely fulfilled.