Chocolate “Cassata” Cannoli Cake

For my Dad’s birthday, I wanted to make him his favorite cake that we usually get from a local Italian bakery. He likes cassata cake the best. The trouble is, he doesn’t like the traditional cassata cake, because he doesn’t like ricotta cheese in his filling. He likes cannoli filling as the filling of his cassata cake. The local bakery we usually get his cake from has a sweeter cannoli filling without the ricotta cheese.

I decided to make him this cake from scratch for his birthday.

Honestly, I don’t remember what chocolate cake recipe I used. I believe I used one that I found from offline. Although I searched the internet for a sturdy chocolate cake recipe, the chocolate cake turned out very moist and delicate.

I didn’t use an actual chocolate bar in this recipe, just a lot of cocoa powder. I didn’t want the cake to be too chocolate-y, because then it would have taken away from the taste of the filling.

I found a recipe for Italian Whipped Butter Frosting, which I used to frost the outside of the cake. You can find this recipe here.

I think making this frosting was my favorite part about making this cake. It was an entirely new experience for me! I’d never heard of putting flour in a frosting recipe before!!!!

Unfortunately, this cake was very moist and crumbly – not good for frosting! I was able to cover most of the damage with the Italian whipped butter frosting.

To put the layers together, I used sweet, ricotta free cannoli cream as filling. I bought it at the local Italian bakery we usually get this cake from. Okay, okay, I cheated – that wasn’t homemade – but I absolutely could not find a recipe for cheese free cannoli cream online!

I realized a little after the fact that, with the white frosting, purple sprinkles, and green and yellow candles I put in it, it looked kind of like a Mardis Gras cake.

My dad really liked this cake, but next time I would like to try this with a firmer cake so it won’t crumble as much. Anyone have a good recipe? =)