This is a recipe for Vegan Cannoli. This one is flavored with Lemon and Raspberry, but you can easily make any variation you want. You will fall in love with the crispy vegan cannoli shells, I guarantee! Enjoy!
Course Dessert
Cuisine Italian, vegan
Keyword cannoli
Prep Time 2 hourshours10 minutesminutes
Cook Time 45 minutesminutes
Total Time 2 hourshours50 minutesminutes
Servings 40cannoli
Calories 290kcal
Ingredients
Vegan Cannoli Shells
2cupsall-purpose flour
1tablespoongranulated sugar
1/2teaspoonfine sea salt
2tablespoonsoil of choiceI used avocado oil
1teaspoonapple cider vinegar
1/2cupwater*
Vegan Cannoli Filling
1cupraw cashews
1/2lbextra firm tofu drained
1tablespoonlemon juice
1teaspoonvanilla bean pasteor vanilla extract
2tablespoonscoconut cream
1tablespoonvegan sour cream
1tablespoonlemon zest
1cuppowdered sugar
Instructions
Vegan Cannoli Shells
Mix flour, sugar, salt in a bowl.
Mix oil, apple cider vinegar, and water in a cup.
Pour liquids over dry ingredients.
Mix with a spatula or paddle attachment of your mixer until ingredients have formed a dough.
Switch to dough hook and start kneading until soft and smooth, about 2 minutes, or knead by hand for a few minutes. Add more flour as necessary, if dough seems too sticky. But try to add as little as possible.
Once the dough is smooth, flatten it out a bit into a disk. Wrap it well with plastic wrap and refrigerate dough for a few hours, at least 4, or preferably overnight.
On the next day, remove the dough from the fridge. You can roll dough out by hand or with the use of a pasta roller. No matter what method you use, divide the dough into 6 pieces and roll them out individually to make it easier. With my pasta machine, I roll the dough through the machine once on every number and stop on number 5. Flour your counter and sprinkle flour over the dough. Don’t use too much flour, just enough to handle the dough easily so it doesn’t stick to the counter when you are trying to cut the circles.
Cut circles with your biscuit cutter. I used a 3.5” cutter.
I usually roll all of my 6 pieces of dough out, cut circles out of them. Roll out the dough scrapes and do the same. And you can roll out these second scrapes once again to obtain a few more circles.
Once you have all your circles cut you can start wrapping them around your cannoli tubes and frying them. (or if you are crazy like me, you can fry the shells and roll the dough out at the same time, but get ready to move fast)
To wrap tubes, place each in the middle of a dough circle, roll out the bottom half and lightly dip your finger in water and brush where will be the seam so the other side will seal. Don’t wrap your tubes too tight or you will have a hard time removing the shell after frying. Just make it a tad looser.
Heat 4 cups of shortening in a large pan with a heavy bottom until it registers 350F. Start frying the cannoli in batches. Fry for one minute on one side and then flip it over with tongs. Once the cannoli is golden brown, remove to a tray lined with wire so the cannoli will drain. If you are lucky like me, you have several tubes and that makes life easier. If not, wait a couple of minutes before removing the shell from the tube after fried. And go on wrapping more until you are done. Wrapping, frying, wrapping, frying. Once shells are cool, place them in an air-tight container, they will keep for 3 days, but start to loose quality the longer they sit.
Vegan Cannoli Filling
This filling is based on this recipe by Oh my veggies. https://ohmyveggies.com/vegan-cannoli-bites/
Soak cashews in water overnight, or in hot water for a couple of hours.
Drain and squeeze them lightly to remove all water once they are done soaking.
Make sure to drain tofu really well. Squeeze it between a cheesecloth if necessary to help remove all the water.
Place cashews in the food processor. Pulse for about 30 seconds. Add tofu, lemon juice, vanilla bean paste, coconut cream, sour cream to the food processor. Process for a few minutes until mixture becomes creamy and smooth.
If mixture seems too runny add more powdered sugar.
Place it in a container and refrigerate for a couple of hours until the mixture is firm.
Right before serving, I added some fresh raspberries to the cannoli filling, and then scooped it into a pastry bag. Or you can just keep your filling plain without the raspberries if you want to.
To assemble
Don’t assemble until you are ready to serve or serve within the next few hours because if you let the filled cannoli sit, the shell gets soggy. I like to keep the filling in a piping bag inside my fridge and the shells stored in an airtight container on my counter. When ready to serve to my lucky guests, I simply pipe the filling in. Fresh, crispy and delicious! Perfection!
I like to use a large round piping tip (around 1/2” inch) fitted in a large piping bag. Scoop the filling in and pipe from the middle to the outside from both sides.
You can coat the tips in crushed pistachios, or any other nuts or in mini chocolate chips.
Another option is to dip the ends of the shells into melted chocolate and let them dry for a while and once the chocolate is dry, fill with the filling.
Sprinkle powdered sugar over shells for the final touch, or drizzle with melted chocolate.
Notes
*I used sparkling water in my vegan cannoli shells. You can use whatever you want, traditionally, you’d use wine, and you can go for that too!*Wine will produce a much crisper shell than using water. If using wine, replace the water and vinegar with the same amount of wine (1/2 cup + 1 tsp).