Cannoli Cups - Low Carb

Yay, my first post on my new blog! 
I'm on a quest to find, or come up with, recipes that are very low carb. For some reason I keep heading to the sweeter side of recipes. Maybe because it's harder to come up with great tasting low carb sweet things!
I accidentally got a lucky break Thursday when shopping for Swerve Sweetener. Looking at their website on Wednesday, I noticed they were out of stock for the Swerve Confectioner's Sweetener, so I decided to wait a day to see if it would be back in stock. When I checked again on Thursday, I noticed the Retailer tab and was happy to find that my local health food store carried Swerve. Instead of just driving over there, I gave them a call to see if they indeed carried it. Well, as it turned out, they had all of their supply on the 50% off rack!! They decided to discontinue carrying it due to lack of sales. Needless to say I hopped in my car and went right on over. I bought 4 one pound bags of the granular, and 1 one pound bag of the confectioner's. Total cost was $28, what a bargain! The big plus is that I've never used Swerve before, and I really like it. I might go back and buy some more of the granular since they had a lot on the discount rack.
A lot of cannoli's that I've had in the past, were always too sweet for my taste, so I stayed away from them. Back in the 1980's, there was a small Italian restaurant (it was actually a house) called Enza's in Hawthorne, New Jersey, and they had the best cannoli's I ever had in my life. They were light and not really that sweet. It was almost as if they used a lot more ricotta than mascarpone for the filling. They have been out of business for a very long time, so there is nobody to verify their recipe.
Without further ado, let's get into the recipe.

Ingredients

CANNOLI FILLING for mini cups or as a pie filling:

• 1 cup of whole milk Ricotta cheese (1 1/3 cup for pie filling)
• 1/3 cup of Mascarpone (BelGioiso® or other zero carb brand) (1/2 cup for pie filling)
• 1/4 cup + 1 Tbsp of Swerve Confectioner's Sweetener (1/3 cup for pie filling)
• 1/4 cup of sugar-free mini choc chips (1/3 cup for pie filling)

CRUST:

• 1 cup blanched almond flour
• 1/4 cup Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free All Purpose Baking Flour
• 2 Tbsp Swerve granulated sweetener or granulated erythritol
• 1 tsp guar or xanthan gum
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup butter, well-chilled and cut into small chunks
• 2 to 4 Tbsp ice water

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and line a mini muffin pan (24 count) with parchment liners.* (Update: I made these again and sprayed the pan instead of using the liners, it worked just fine)
2. For the crust, combine almond flour, GF all purpose flour, Swerve, xanthan gum, and salt, in a food processor. Pulse to combine.
3. Sprinkle butter in, and pulse until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
4. With processor running on low, add ice water 1 tablespoon at a time, until dough begins to clump together.
5. Cover work surface with a large sheet of parchment paper and sprinkle with almond flour. Turn out dough and form into a disk.
6. Sprinkle with additional almond flour and top with another piece of parchment, then carefully roll out in all directions to form a 10-inch circle.
7. Remove top parchment and use a circle cookie cutter (or a small drinking glass works too) that measures 2 inches across. This size works perfect for the mini muffin pan. Cut as many circles as you can, then gently lift circles with an offset spatula, and press down into the liners.
8. With the remaining scraps, you could just cut pieces and press them into the liners if there are only a few cups left to fill. Or re-roll the scraps and cut more circles.
9. Poke some holes in the bottom of crust with a fork.
10. Bake 10 to 13 minutes or until pastry is light golden brown. Let cool completely in pan before adding the cannoli cream filling.
11. For the filling, in a small bowl add the ricotta, Mascarpone, and Swerve. Add the sugar free chocolate chips. With a hand mixer, beat all together until it is nice and creamy smooth.
12. Put the mixture into a pastry bag, or improvise and make your own, and pipe the filling into the cooled mini cups. Keep refrigerated!

* The parchment paper and muffin liners that I use and highly recommend are unbleached and chlorine free, from a company called If You Care®.

Notes
Yield - 24 mini Cannoli Cups
Based on the ingredients I used: For the full crust = 27g net carbs and full amount of filling = 8.8g net carbs.
Each Cannoli Cup is 1.5g net carb, and that's low enough to have 2 Servings, yay!!

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