To know cannoli is to love it, but that doesn’t always mean that making cannoli fits into your day. (Or that you have an Italian bakery down the street. We should all be so lucky.) For the cannoli-less cannoli-lovers among us, there’s another option — Cannoli Poke Cake.
It’s cake, so it’s not going to fool anyone into thinking it’s actually cannoli, but it does give you that same beautiful sweet ricotta filling — this time supported by a moist vanilla cake — and a sprinkling of mini chocolate chips and powdered sugar too. Cannoli-inspired, yes, but also totally delicious in its own right? Absolutely.
If you haven’t yet had the pleasure, a poke cake is basically a cake (usually baked in a 9×13 pan) that you poke holes all over to give room for a filling to run down into the cake and create more flavor. There are many ways to do it and most of them are great. (This one might be my favorite yet.) They usually start with a boxed mix to make life easy and this one takes that shortcut — it starts with a box of white cake which you just prepare according to the directions on the box. Easy.
Then you take something — I like to use the handle end of a wooden spoon — and poke holes all over the cake. In this case, you’re going to pour sweetened condensed milk over the top of the cake, maybe using a rubber spatula to coax it into those holes a bit. Since sweetened condensed milk is more delicious than it has any right to be, I’m very happy about this part.
Then you want to chill the cake to give those two components some time to really come together.
While the cake chills, you can start to work on the topping, which is where the cannoli-inspired aspect really starts to come into play. It’s basically the same as cannoli filling — ricotta, mascarpone, powdered sugar, and vanilla mixed together. This has a little sweetened condensed milk too just for a little something extra.
You’ll spread that over the top and then chill the cake again for a couple of hours. That chilling time just makes things more sliceable and gives the fillings some time to set up.
Chocolate chips and powdered sugar are a must but you can do those before chilling or right before you serve; they hold fine in the fridge.
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