Let me start off by saying that I am drooling as I write this…

Last weekend my husband and I made a rack of lamb for dinner. Naturally when planning the meal I had asked myself: But what will we have for dessert after??? Now, when you have something as spectacular as a rack of lamb for dinner you have to follow up with an equally spectacular dessert. And a cannoli napoleon most definitely lives up to these high expectations. I used Lidia Bastianich’s recipe. And it was awesome.

The dough has a healthy dose of red wine and gets fried to a crispy perfection. And who doesn’t like fried dough?! The filling is made with ricotta, sugar, candied orange rind, roasted almonds, chocolate, and orange liqueur. Lidia’s recipe calls for Grand Marnier but I substituted with Cointreau because it’s what I had in the house and it worked just great. I – of course – used homemade ricotta. And then I also used homemade candied orange rind. (It was my first time making candied orange rind. I followed these directions; it was pretty easy and it turned out great.)

There were a lot of steps but it was seriously so worth it. First off, fried dough is amazing. And then the cream was soooo good. It was sweet, but not too sweet. The ricotta’s saltiness and the toasted almonds balanced out the sweetness. And the candied orange and the liqueur added the perfect hint of orange to the dish. My husband and I had to restrain ourselves from eating all the cream before frying up the dough.

I’m already trying to think of a reason to make this again. Maybe another rack-of-lamb dinner is in my near future…

p.s. – When I made this dessert I got five servings from the recipe. I only needed two servings for the first night then I had the rest for leftovers. I fried up all of the dough the first night then kept the leftover fried dough (and cream) in the fridge. To eat the leftovers I heated up the fried dough in the oven right before serving and it worked out just great!