Sift the flour with the cinnamon into a bowl. Sand the flour by dispersing the lard with your fingertips, add the sugar and grated orange peel.

Mix in the whole egg and continue to knead, adding the salt dissolved in the vinegar and the Marsala wine. You will obtain a consistent and elastic dough. Finish it quickly on the work surface and put it in the fridge for at least 2 hours, before using it.

Roll out a third of the dough at a time, with the pastry sheet or rolling pin, reaching a thickness of 1.5 mm. Using a 10 cm diameter pastry ring, cut out discs that you will stretch slightly to make an oval.

Seal the outer flaps with egg yolk, overlapping them along the centerline of the torch. Cover cannoli ready for frying with plastic wrap, preventing them from drying on the surface, which would compromise the development of bubbles during cooking. Immerse the cannoli in oil at 175°C, seal side down.

Very crumbly bubbles will form on the surface of the cannoli, handle them gently using a perforated ladle. In a few seconds they will be golden brown and ready to drain on frying paper. Wait until they reach room temperature before removing the metal torch.

The scraps of fried puff pastry, in absence of the proper metal torches, can be used to create a “decomposed cannolo” by alternating them with ricotta cream.

For the cream: sift the ricotta well drained from the whey, work it for a minute with electric whips, incorporating the icing sugar.

The cannoli wafers should be filled with the ricotta cream only at the time of serving, using a sac à poche with a smooth 16 mm nozzle or a spatula.

Decorate the ends according to preference: with icing sugar, cherry and orange candied fruit, dark chocolate, chopped pistachios, cinnamon or a mix.

Start preparing the Sicilian cassata the day before serving it. Make a classic sponge cake, bake it in a rectangular baking tin and leave it to cool.

Next, drain the goat ricotta in a colander and mix it in a bowl with the vanilla icing sugar: cover the bowl with cling film and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, sieve the ricotta twice until you obtain a smooth and soft cream. At this point, add the chocolate chips to the cream and place the resulting filling in the refrigerator in a bowl covered with cling film.

Prepare the green marzipan by kneading the marzipan together with the pistachio paste, dusting the work surface with a little icing sugar.

Roll out the marzipan into a sheet, cut it in half lengthways and cut out trapezoid-shaped pieces of dough. For the cassata, use a special round one with flared edges about 5 cm high and slightly raised bottom.

Cut the sponge cake into strips at least 6 cm high and cut them into trapezoids. Dust the cake tin very well with icing sugar and then line the edges alternating the trapezoids of sponge cake with those of green marzipan.

Once the entire perimeter of the cake tin has been completed, you can lay the bottom with the spongy part down. Now, prepare a syrup to moisten the sponge cake: dissolve 50 g of sugar in 150 ml of water, together with the zest of half a lemon and half a small glass of maraschino and let it cool. Then pour the cream over the sponge cake.

Now you can fill the base with the ricotta cream, which you will level with a spatula. Then cover with cling film and refrigerate for at least two to three hours.

When the cassata is firm and the fragrances are mixed, turn it upside down onto a plate and prepare a fondant glaze by putting the icing sugar in a saucepan together with a little water, as much as is needed to obtain a creamy and still white mixture. As soon as it comes to the boil, the fondant is ready to be poured into the centre of the cassata and spread with a spatula. Do the same on the sides of the cassata.

You can now decorate your cassata with the candied fruit at your disposal, alternating the various colours. The final touch will be given by the decoration with royal icing, which you will make by beating an egg white until stiff and adding icing sugar a little at a time until you obtain a very dense consistency. Using a pastry bag with a rather thin nozzle, create decorations both on the fruit and on the edges of the cassata, to make it even richer and sumptuous. Now your magnificent Sicilian cassata is ready to be enjoyed.