Cream puffs and Cannoli’s

While nowadays it’s common advice for a husband to NOT give his wife kitchen appliances for special occasions, in my house that advice is false. Here, I love to cook and bake, and adore all the gadgets out there that help to make it easier to make even more creations. To that end my husband bought me a deep fryer this past week and I LOVE it. I’ve made far too many deep fried foods and had a blast doing it!

One of the best parts about my gift is that I am not the only one that adores using it. My kids are all interested in cooking and baking and I encourage them all to learn such a valuable life skill as culinary skills are! While I realize that knowing how to make perfect cannoli’s or cream puffs or even breaded deep fried stuffing patties are not essential to their lives, it certainly doesn’t hurt to know how 🙂 I know my eldest loves to bake more than cook, so he’s been thrilled with the baking we’ve doing, (as well as his new camouflage print apron I made him for Yule and his own set of piping tools.)

Me, while I love the baking, it’s the memories we make together, and the conversations we have as we go that I love the most. For example, I’d never made cannoli’s before, and so while I’d found a recipe online I didn’t have cannoli tubes, so I improvised. Some of my ideas were great and worked wonderfully, if a little large, but others were disasters. As Mr. C was trying so hard to make me feel better with encouraging words about how they weren’t “that bad” and that they “looked great!” I smiled and let him in on a secret. I don’t mind that they weren’t perfect from the start. I only mind if I give up before I get the hang of it. I believe that with enough effort and attempts, with perseverance I’ll succeed. He looked at me with surprise and asked “But aren’t you mad that you didn’t make them right, right away? Doesn’t it make you upset that one’s burnt, and that one’s totally flat?” and so I told him “No, I know that cannoli’s are said to be tricky, and even if they were thought of as easy I’d still be okay with needing time to master them. It’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay to mess up and have terrible results, as long as you don’t give up, as long as you don’t quit.”

I wanted him to know that it’s okay to mess up, we all do, at least if we’re really living we do. When we’re fully immersed in life, in our life, it’s a messy, convoluted, upside down, right side out tilt a whirl experience. I don’t want him to be afraid to fully live because he thinks he’ll get it wrong, I want him to smile and learn from his mistakes cause eventually the cannoli’s will turn out great 😉

 

 

P.S The recipe I used for the cannoli’s was: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/cannoli-2/ 

The cream puffs: http://www.andtheycookedhappilyeverafter.com/2013/06/15/grampa-murphys-boston-cream-donuts/

However the breaded deep fried stuffing patties was all my idea 🙂 I used a half bread half potato stuffing as that is what I had on had as it’s the only stuffing any of my family ever makes. Our grandpa used it, and our parents all learnt it and used it and now my brother and even some of our cousins still use this one recipe for stuffing. I think a bread only stuffing wouldn’t have held together as well in the deep fryer as well as one that was thicker from the potatoes added, so be careful what recipe you choose if you’re going to make those 🙂

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