DIY Cannoli, No Batteries Required

You can bet I wasn't out looking for a cannoli kit when I can across this one at Costco today. I didn't even know that such a thing existed. I grew up in a town with two amazing Italian bakeries. Caffe Caruso and the Florentine Pastry Shop have been serving cannoli, tubes of fried pastry dough filled with ricotta cream, to Uticans for generations, and I eat my way through their cases whenever I'm back in Upstate New York.

But Italian bakeries are few and far between in the Pacific Northwest, so there was no way I was going to pass up this yummy-looking DIY project. Unlike a gingerbread house kit that can take hours (or days!) to assemble, the cannoli kit is a no-brainer. You simply pipe the chocolate chip-studded ricotta filling (already in a disposable piping bag) into the pastry, sprinkle with powdered sugar and chow down. 

--Tracy Schneider