Charlestown Resident Shares Cherished Family Recipe for All to Enjoy

Charlene “Sally” DiDomenico lives a sweet life. For the last 50 years, she has been whipping up cannoli from scratch, following a recipe handed down from her late husband’s Sicilian grandmother. 

Now, Sally is sharing her family recipe with her friends and neighbors at Charlestown, an Erickson Senior Living community in Catonsville, Md., so everyone can enjoy a little taste of Italy.

“But my goal since I moved to Charlestown—back in 2013—was to teach some of the chefs here how to make my cannoli recipe, so that they could make them for the whole community,” says Sally. 

Last September, she finally got her wish. She invited Chef Phil Maloney, senior director of the culinary program for Erickson Senior Living; Kevin Bunn, vice president of Dining Services at Erickson; and Nathan Blumberg, Erickson’s senior director of long-range community planning and strategy, over for a cannoli-making class in her kitchen.

“When Nathan shared Sally’s story with me, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to be a part of this,” says Maloney. “The cannoli are delicious—one of the best I’ve ever had. The filling is not overly sweet, and the shell is light but not too delicate.”

Made with love

Using the same recipe she jotted down on a yellowed piece of paper decades ago, Sally shared how to make her cherished cannoli. The simple recipe yields 130 cannoli, which means “little tubes” in Italian. The homemade shells are stuffed with a creamy filling made from ricotta cheese, confectioner’s sugar, and vanilla.

“The secret to a good cannoli is in the shell,” says Sally. “You have to pinch off a piece of dough about the size of a nickel and roll it out as thin as possible.”

Sally then wraps the paper-thin dough around aluminum tubes and deep fries them for 45 seconds, which “creates the perfect crunch,” she notes. In her kitchen, the creamy cannoli filling is whipped up in a Sunbeam mixer she bought for $10 from Charlestown’s Treasure Sale.

“You can put chocolate chips, shaved chocolate, or candied fruit—really anything you want—into the filling. My husband always liked them plain, so that is how I made them. I would often dip the ends in rainbow or chocolate sprinkles,” says Sally.

Family recipe

The recipe was originally handed down from her late husband’s Sicilian grandmother to her mother-in-law, but when it came to Sally getting the recipe, it was not that easy. 

“His grandmother didn’t speak English, but she made the best cannoli in the world. For years, my husband asked his mother to share the recipe with me so I could learn how to make them, but she always insisted that they were too difficult to prepare. I’m not sure if she truly believed that or if she just didn’t want me to have the recipe,” says Sally, with a laugh. 

After 20 years, Sally finally received the recipe from her sister-in-law and has been making them ever since.

“They are extremely labor intensive, but I have always enjoyed making them because of the joy they bring to other people. I always say I put a little bit of love in each one!” says Sally.

Sweet story

In 2019, Sally shared her family’s recipe in front of an audience for a live cooking show on Charlestown’s in-house TV station. During that taping, she shared stories with the crowd about meeting and marrying her husband, starting and raising a family, going to work, and, finally, moving to Charlestown.

“I grew up on Middle River, and my friend had a canoe that we would take out onto Seneca Creek,” she recalls. “My husband lived across the cove, and he and his friend would take their motorboat out on the creek, riding in circles around us trying to flip us over.” 

She continues, “One day, my friend invited me to a party, and my husband showed up. The moment he walked through the door, I was smitten. I knew then that he was the man I wanted to marry.”

Sally was introduced to the family’s cannoli recipe during their first Christmas together. 

“Every year, my mother-in-law made them during the holidays and shared them with everyone,” says Sally, who took on this tradition after her mother-in-law passed away.

Then, after moving to Charlestown, she began making the cannoli for staff and neighbors. “I also made and sold them once here to raise money for Philanthropy, and they were gone so fast—it was incredible,” Sally recalls. 

Legacy that will live on

This January, Sally’s family cannoli recipe was entered into NetMenu, the database where recipes from all Erickson Senior Living communities are stored for use. 

She was also honored with her own chef’s jacket, now displayed in a frame alongside the original recipe at the company’s home office.

“Sally is known at Charlestown as the ‘Cannoli Lady,’ and this is a neat way to have her legacy live on,” says Blumberg. “Now that every Erickson Senior Living community will have the opportunity to taste her cannoli recipe, we expect it will quickly become a nationwide resident favorite.” 

To learn more about the special ways Charlestown residents share their passions with neighbors, request a free brochure or call 1-800-481-0935 to speak to member of the sales team.