Most people are familiar with an infamous ice cream flavor that combines the tart flavors of cherries with the rich flavor of chocolate. We thought Valentine's Day would be a great time to re create those flavors in a delicious cannoli dip! 

This dip uses our cannoli cream recipe, then combines the syrup found in high end maraschino cherries, with dark chocolate chunks to create the perfect balance of cherry and chocolate. 

We found that you needed a lot of syrup to get that cherry flavor, so this filling is a little too loose to fill cannoli with. If you have your heart set on filling cannoli, try to find extra dry ricotta impastata, or let your dip sit in the fridge overnight. 

Here is what you'll need:

16 oz of cannoli filling (if you're making it yourself, make sure you drain the ricotta over night to get some of the moisture out.) Our recipe is here

1/2 cup of maraschino cherries, washed and crushed by hand

2 tbsp of cherry syrup (see our note on cherries below)

1/4 cup of dark chocolate chunks or chips

Optional: red food coloring 

Before we begin, lets talk about cherries. Almost everyone is familiar with those bright red cherries that top ice cream sundaes, but here we suggest splurging on a different kind of cherry, Fabbri Amarena or Luxardo cherries. Made in Italy, these cherries have a more complex flavor that those bright red orbs we're familiar with stateside.  Their syrup is thicker, a little goes a long way here, and keeps our cannoli cream from getting too thin.  If you're going to use American maraschino cherries, we recommend taking the juice from the container and boiling it on the stove until it reduces by half, then mixing it into the filling

After you've sorted out your cherry juice, this filling is easy! Simply combine crushed cherries, chocolate chinks, cherry syrup and cannoli filling and you're done! Refrigerate until you're ready to serve, then serve with cannoli chips for dipping.