Cannoli Cream Cake

One of my good friends just turned 40 last weekend🎉 , so her husband asked me to make her a birthday cake. You should know, they are very Italian…like cannoli connoisseur Italians 👨‍🍳🌎. So when they asked me to make a cannoli cream cake, I was terrified! I pretended to be as confident as possible and started looking up different cakes and fillings and came up with my plan. And guess what?! This cake got rave reviews from my friends; I feel like an honorary Italian now. I was so nervous when I tried it myself, thinking maybe they were just being nice, but all the flavors in the cannoli filling mixed with the rich chocolate cake were incredible! It’s definitely not a light cake, so smaller servings is best, but oh boy is it good.

Cannoli Cream Cake

I’m going to show you how to make the Cannoli Cream and how to assemble the cake in this post, with a few decorating tips. You will need one batch of my Extra Dark Chocolate Cake, and one batch of Vanilla Swiss Buttercream.

1. Ok, let’s prepare our cannoli cream filling! The first step is to strain your ricotta cheese. Let it sit in a sieve for 1 hour to drain the liquid out. While that’s sitting, you can measure out the rest of your ingredients. If you’re in a hurry you can also squeeze out the liquid in the ricotta using cheesecloth.

2. Once the ricotta has been drained, whisk it in a bowl to get a creamier texture. Then, add the powdered sugar and spices and continue whisking.

3. Take your cold heavy whipping cream and whip it up to a medium/stiff peak. This is a small amount of cream, so this is one of those rare occasions that I’ll actually be whipping my cream by hand!

4. Add your whipped cream to the ricotta mixture and gently fold it in until you don’t see any white streaks of cream left in the mixture.

5. Next, use a micro plane to zest your lemon. I like to zest directly into the bowl of ricotta. Add your chocolate chips as well. Now fold the mixture until the ingredients are well combined. Cover and refrigerate the cannoli cream filling for 1 hour before stacking your cake.

6. Take your cooled chocolate cake out and make sure you’ve removed the parchment paper from the bottom.
If you have a cake turntable, now’s the time to use it. If you don’t have one, you can use a lazy susan. If you don’t have either, I seriously recommend investing in one if you like to make cakes. It makes cutting and decorating significantly less challenging!
Place the cake in the center of your turntable. I like to keep the plastic wrap underneath to catch some of the crumbs.

7. Take your longest serrated knife out; it’s time to cut some layers! First, we’re going to cut of the top bump, so we have a flat surface for our cake. Place your knife against the side of the cake, just low enough to cut off where the cake rose in the center. Cut a small notch, and keep your knife there. Hold your elbow against your body to steady your hand holding the knife. Now, don’t move your hand holding the knife, and start turning the cake on the turntable. As you turn, the knife should remain level and as you apply a little pressure, you should end up with an evenly cut layer.

8. Repeat step 7 until you have all of your layers cut. I used 2, 8-inch cakes and cut each into 2 layers, for a total of 4 layers of cake. Each layer should be about 3/4 – 1 inch tall.

9. Spread some icing on an 8-inch cake board, and place your first layer of cake on the cake board. Place this in the center of your turntable.

10. Fill a piping bag with buttercream and cut a large hole in the tip. Pipe a buttercream wall around the edges of your cake layer. This will keep the cannoli filling in place when we start stacking and icing the cake.

11. It’s time to add our first layer of cannoli cream filling. Place 3 large scoops of filling onto the center of your cake layer. Use a small offset spatula to spread the filling inside of your buttercream wall.

12. Add a layer of cake, taking care to line up the sides as best as you can. Repeat steps 10 and 11, piping a buttercream wall around the edge of your cake layer and filling it with 3 scoops of cannoli cream filling. Continue this process until you get to your last year of cake. Place that layer on top, but do not add any filling on top.

13. Your cake is built! All that’s left is buttercream and some decorations! Place a heaping scoop of room temperature buttercream on top of your cake. Use and offset spatula to spread it over the top of the cake, letting it hang over the edges and onto the sides of your cake. Use your offset, in a back and forth motion, to smooth the buttercream on the sides around the whole cake. You can need to add buttercream if you didn’t scoop enough in the beginning.

14. This layer is just going to be our crumb coat, so we’ll clean it up with a bench scraper to get some nice clean edges as our base. Hold the bench scraper against your cake and gently spin the turntable. The turning of the cake will push the buttercream against the bench scraper and give you a nice straight edge. At this point, you will still see a lot of cake showing through. Use your offset spatula to flatten the top of your cake. Pull the edges of buttercream sticking up on the sides towards the center of the cake, using the offset spatula. This will give you a nice clean edge on top.

15. Refrigerate you crumb coated cake for about an 20-30 minutes. The crumb coat will become very solid. Now you’re going to repeat the same steps we made when crumb coating our cake, but this will be our final layer. Scoop a hefty amount of buttercream on top of the cake, spread it around the sides, smooth the sides with a bench scraper, and finish off the top with your offset spatula. This time, you shouldn’t be able to see the cake layers through the buttercream.

16. Now put your mini chocolate chips in a bowl, and put a baking sheet under your cake. Take handfuls of chocolate chips and gently press them into the sides of the cake about 3/4 of the way to the top. Use the bowl and baking sheet to catch any from falling. Gently brush away the excess chocolate chips, and place your cake in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

17. After your cake is nice and cold, use a flat spatula to transfer it to a larger decorative cake board or onto your favorite cake stand. Some chocolate chips might fall off where your fingers were, you just add a few more chips to cover it up.

18. Pipe a decorative border around the top. Sprinkle on some mini chips if you want to!

19. I topped mine with cannoli shell pieces tossed in cinnamon and sugar. I bought the cannoli shells online, then just flash fried them and tossed them in a bowl with cinnamon sugar.

20. Enjoy your cake! I actually think this cake taste’s better sitting in the fridge for a day before enjoying.

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