Retrenched CEO Starts Home-Based Biz Selling DIY Cannoli Kits With Hawker Husband

When Adele Chia returned home to Singapore in March this year from Ho Chi Minh City, where she had been based for work, she didn’t expect her short “holiday” stay to become permanent.

The Singaporean, 46, had moved to Vietnam in 2019 to take up a job as the CEO of an education company there. “I came back on the day Singapore was locked down thinking it would be my last home holiday. But Vietnam locked down three days later, so I was working remotely from Singapore for a few months,” she tells 8days.sg.

Then in May, she suddenly lost her job when her company’s owners decided to sell off their business. “My contract was terminated as a result,” says Adele, who couldn’t return to Vietnam to pack her belongings due to Covid-19 travel restrictions. “My Singaporean friend helped me pack and ship back my stuff. I was blessed to have a wonderful landlord who waived my rental.”

Feeling “a bit scared”, she immediately tried to look for another job. “I did so for the first month, but I realised it was extremely tough. I knew it was almost impossible to find another job in a short time, so I decided to take a break and do what I had always wanted to do.”

Adele decided to try her hand at making cannoli, which she had first tried during a trip to Rome and “fell in love” with it. “I had always wanted to make my own ever since, but never had the time,” she says. Cannoli, a relatively underrated Sicilian dessert, consists of a ricotta cheese filling piped into tubular pastry shells, which are then dipped on both ends into toppings like crushed pistachio nuts and chocolate chips.

Along with her husband Edmund Ng, 45, she started a home-based business called Cannolicious, which offers a DIY kit that lets customers pipe their own cannolis. “I don’t want to sell yet another burnt cheesecake, muffin or cookie,” she muses on her unique business idea.

She also deliberately made her offering DIY, as she explains: “Cannoli is traditionally eaten fresh. They only pipe the cream after taking your order ’cos the shell gets soggy very quickly. I wanted to present the cannoli in its best form.”

According to Adele, going into F&B was her way of “supporting” her husband in return. When she took up her job in Vietnam, Edmund had moved there with her. “He was there solely to take care of me. In a way, he put his dreams on hold to support me in my career,” she shares.

Prior to their relocation, Edmund was working as a hawker with his own stall at Bedok North Hawker Centre. “He used to sell yong tau foo, but closed down the stall ’cos it was too difficult being a one-man operation,” Adele says. He considered setting up his own private home dining biz, which was scuppered by the pandemic. He then had the idea of setting up a home-based operation selling a French-style orh nee tart. “I converted him to the cannoli,” laughs Adele.

As a “marketing person”, Adele believed that her product “must be visually presentable”. Each Cannolicious DIY kit is beautifully packaged in an elegant cream-coloured box, with its contents wrapped in brown tissue paper like a precious luxury bag. “We spent a bit of effort on the design as we’re also looking at the kit as an overall experience,” she says. “I want to tell people that home-based businesses can be premium and classy too. Homemade doesn’t have to look like it literally just came out from the home kitchen.”

Each box - which contains ingredients to make 12 cannolis - costs $55, with a $10 delivery fee. Delivery days are only from Fridays to Sundays, as Adele and Edmund spend the rest of the week assembling the kits. “There’s a lot of work that goes into it. The shells take me three days to make, ’cos there are many steps that go into it,” says Adele. She also makes the ricotta cheese filling using Hokkaido milk. “I researched the recipes and tried several versions. My hubby then tweaked the recipes until we got shells that are fragrant and crispy, and cheese that’s rich, creamy and not too sweet,” she says.

8days.sg tries our hand at making the cannolis, which is surprisingly easy and fuss-free. The kit comes with two piping bags of ricotta cheese filling, plus small containers of crushed pistachio nuts, dark chocolate chips, icing sugar and a little disposable sieve for dusting the sugar over the cannolis.

Adele recommends chilling the ricotta cheese for 30 minutes in the fridge after delivery, to firm up its texture for piping and for better flavour (don’t throw the kit box away immediately – it’s printed with the instructions for the cannoli-making). It’s not hard to squeeze the cheese into the fat, hollow pastry tubes. You could either fill the shell from both ends or do a single mighty squeeze. Even kids can do it.

Don’t worry if you goof up on the piping - the cannoli is a very forgiving dessert. That’s when you dip the piped shell into the pistachio nuts and choc chips to hide the wonky ends and make your creation pro-looking.

The dusting of icing sugar - done just before serving - is a little messier, though. The cute but too-small sieve spills sugar all over. Use a bigger sieve, if you have one.

We admittedly never found the fried cannoli particularly appealing in a spread of Italian desserts - even the ones we tried in Italy tasted a little of stale grease. But Adele and Edmund’s cannoli, despite being delivered, are pretty fab. The shells are thin, fine and crunchy, with a faint cinnamon scent. They are also not too greasy, and cradle the smooth, decadently creamy ricotta cheese well. We prefer a pistachio topping over the dark choc chip one, which makes the cannoli sweeter.

Adele and Edmund are still considering launching a private dining service in their home, though she says “it will depend on where we go with this cannoli biz”. The couple were planning on cooking “traditional Teochew dishes interpreted in a different way”, as Edmund is Teochew. Adele reckons they might incorporate Cannolicius into private dining: “We don't know yet for sure!”

To order, WhatsApp 8877-7061. www.cannolicious.com.

PHOTOS: YIP JIEYING/ MUNSTER (ADELE & EDMUND’S PORTRAITS)