The Largest Cannolo Ever Made Was Literally The Size Of A Whale

You've heard the immortal line "leave the gun; take the cannoli" uttered by mobsters in the film "The Godfather," but just imagine trying to travel with a cannolo over 70 feet long! One of the mistakes people make when ordering Italian food is not realizing that "cannoli" is plural; "cannolo" refers to just one of these scrumptious, quintessential pastries, in which sweetened ricotta cheese is encased in a crunchy shell. While some of the dishes at your favorite spaghetti shack consist of foods that aren't actually Italian, cannoli hail traditionally from Sicily. The world's longest cannolo was, appropriately, made in Italy, albeit not in Sicily. Rather, it was assembled in Caltanissetta in 2022 by a team led by chef Calogero "Lillo" Defraia.

Defraia had a team of pastry chefs from across the country on hand to help him with the Herculean task of rolling the immense cannolo, which contained a stunning 1,500 pounds of ricotta cheese and, per photos shared on Reddit, was shielded from the elements by a long line of overlapping umbrellas. The Guinness Book of World Records team was on hand to verify the record, which usurped the previous title set in 2016 by a comparative pipsqueak of a 16-foot cannolo. Defraia's dessert measured exactly 21.43 meters, or 70 feet, 3 inches, making it the size of an actual whale. The largest mammal in the world, the blue whale, averages 88 feet in length, so the Italian cannolo was more accurately the size of an adolescent or somewhat smaller species — but a whale, nonetheless. 

It's hard to count how many utterances of "holy cannoli!" were made about the enormous dessert, or how many pedants felt the need to engage in another round of the "cannolo/cannoli" clarification. Still, the social media commentary on the record-setting cannolo was, as to be expected, priceless. "The shell to filling ratio is a wee bit off but I'll enjoy it nonetheless," one Redditor shrugged. Another Reddit comment was less objective about the amount of ricotta: "But why did it have to be so thick?" Several expressed sadness that they weren't on hand for when the cannolo was cut and fed to the masses. "Could never finish that but at the time would be next best thing to heaven," one Facebook user sighed. "How long that took... I cannoli imagine! (Thank you, thank you very much)," a glib jokester cracked.

In 2023, members of Philadelphia's sizable Italian diaspora attempted to break the cannolo length record. Allegedly, 100 feet was the goal. The end product couldn't be registered with officials, as it was eaten by the crowd before it could be measured. Honestly, we can't blame them.

You will likely never see a whale-sized cannolo anywhere normal, including America's oldest Italian restaurant, located in California. Manufacturing cannoli almost the length of football fields is probably an unrealistic pursuit for most pastry chefs, after all. The next time we pick up a cannolo from the market — we love the kind studded with chocolate chips — we'll imagine it being exponentially larger, and shake our heads in fresh disbelief. (And then wolf it down!)