A Long and Endearing Family Tradition is alive and well in Collingswood

Mike and Anne have always worked with food.  It is their passion.  When their children were young, they catered a French Gourmet line. 

“Julia Child was my inspiration.  I consider her to be the Saint of the Modern American Gourmet Kitchen.”, says Mike Cipolla, one half of Cipolli Cannoli.

“I  became friends with the whole process and so Les Deux Oignons was born.  This was the name of our In-Your-Own-Home-French-Gourmet-Catering service.  I called it this because it means The Two Onions.  Well, why not?  It was a French gourmet line of foods that we offered and we are Italian.  In Italian, our name, Cipolla, means Onion.  What a noble vegetable.”

Their clients would often ask for Italian foods, which they were only too glad to provide. 

“Anne’s mama and my own were great Italian cooks.  Anne and I learned how to cook in the Italian way via our mamas.”

Les Deux Oignons, of course, made cannoli for dessert.  Many of their clients told them that these cannoli were the best they had ever eaten.  Anne and Mike would talk about one day operating a cannoli shop.  Who would have guessed that they would already be in their eighth year!

“I’ll never forget my first taste of a cannoli.  It was at the wedding of my godmother, Gemma.  It was a truly Italian style wedding in New York City where I was born.  The bride and groom came around with a tray of cannoli.  My father, who could speak English with only a deep Sicilian accent, tried to have me taste the cannoli.  I was only about four years old and in my eyes it did not look like anything I wanted to eat.  ‘Mikey, mangia cannoli.  You like, believea me.’  So, I did, and at that moment, I knew I was in love.”

As Mike grew up, he always looked for the finest cannoli, but never found anything as good as the one he had at that wedding. So being inventive, Mike and Anne took the recipes of their mamas and combined them. 

“I did this with the memory of that one cannoli I had at the wedding feast so many years ago.  We arrived at that cannoli in our traditional cream.”

It took many trials and a lot of tasting, but Cipolli Cannoli is the cannoli of Mike’s childhood.  The wonderful Sicilian specialty of ricotta cheese sweetened and laced with milk chocolate and special spices is now available to all who are looking for the perfect cannoli!