A Boston transplant and a Los Osos native seize the day with specialty cannoli shop Yolo Cannolo 

Moving from Boston to Los Osos resulted in transitioning Jeff and Emma Powers' careers from business and law to cannoli.

Together, they opened Yolo Cannolo in October. Their sweet ricotta-filled Sicilian pastry is steadily becoming a familiar dessert at San Luis Obispo County's farmers markets, aesthetically bolstered by the bright orange boxes the Powerses serve their cannoli in.

"In 2016, I went out to Boston for law school, and we met within months when I was there," Los Osos native Emma said. "I had my first cannoli with him in Boston and didn't know what they were."

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• Photo Courtesy Of Yolo Cannolo
• MARKET FINDS Yolo Cannolo co-owner Jeff Powers mans the pop-up tent at a local farmers market where he and his wife, Emma, dole out cannoli to the masses.

Raised in Boston, Jeff was no stranger to cannoli thanks to the city's thriving Italian American population. It almost seemed like a no-brainer for him to start a cannoli business, especially since he comes from an Italian family.

"His uncle owned an Italian bakery, and he actually gave us his recipe before we left," Emma said.

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• Photo By Bulbul Rajagopal
• BETWEEN TWO CANNOLI Yolo Cannolo's freshly filled and sugar-dusted cannoli are available dipped in chocolate chips or pistachios or both.

Jeff's uncle's recipe is for the fluffy ricotta mixture that goes inside the cannoli shells. Jeff and Emma make batches of it every week and fill crisp pastry tubes to order at the Baywood Farmers Market on Mondays, the Paso Robles Farmers Market and SLO Farm Supply on Tuesdays, the Atascadero Farmers Market on Wednesdays, and the Templeton and Morro Bay farmers markets on Saturdays. Yolo Cannolo offers online orders for pickup on Sundays and Thursdays when the Powerses work out of the Kitchen Terminal in SLO.

"We did some searching [in SLO County], and there's really no place that sells cannoli," Jeff said. "There are a couple of Italian restaurants that have it on their dessert menu, but back in Boston you can just walk into a pastry shop, grab a few cannoli, and you're on your way."

The Powerses tested the waters before setting up their first farmers market cannoli booth. They invited a select few community members to try the dessert and gauged its reception. It proved to be a hit, and social media buzzed with word of a specialty cannoli shop arriving in the county.

"There are two camps at farmers markets," Jeff said. "It's either, 'I can never find good cannoli, this is so awesome!' and there are other people who are like, 'What's a cannoli?'"

For starters, "cannoli" is plural for cannolo. The dessert is ricotta cheese-based but with added sweetness. Emma told New Times that the outer shell must be crispy, so cannoli need to be eaten almost immediately because fridge time will lead to a soggy shell. The two ends of the filled pastry have generous amounts of ricotta poking out of them. The Powerses dip both sides in either chocolate chips or shards of pistachio. They hope to add more flavors in the future, including a chocolate shell.

"We've gotten plenty of people who'd like us to put candied fruits mixed into the cream, and about the same amount of people telling us they're so glad we do not do that," Emma said with a laugh. "There are so many ideas out there. I know some traditional flavors put cherries on the end; we've thought of caramel and coffee. I think we would want to run some kind of contest where people tell us what they're looking for."

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• Photo By Bulbul Rajagopal
• MADE TO ORDER Yolo Cannolo co-owner Emma Powers fills a cannolo shell with sweet ricotta cream before dipping both ends in chocolate chips.

But even with the two starter flavors of pistachio and chocolate chip, Yolo Cannolo offers choices. Try both flavors by getting the combination cannolo where one end is dipped in chocolate and the other gets the pistachio treatment. Don't want a whole cannolo to yourself? Get mini versions that are slightly longer than fingers.

"We also do DIY kits," Jeff said. "So, if someone wants to do it at home, we can sell them the pastry bag [of ricotta filling] and shells separately, so they can fill it at home if they're not going to consume them that day."

Yolo Cannolo goes through roughly 50 cannoli at farmers markets. They sell out quick for good reason. The cannoli are a little longer than the average human palm, filled abundantly with ricotta cream, and pleasantly dusted with powdered sugar. The sturdy biscuit-like shell snaps and crumbles pleasingly until the last bite, and the whipped ricotta is light and never too sweet. The addition of pistachio or chocolate completes the interplay of crunchy and creamy textures.

Eventually, the Powerses want to add more staff members to their two-person team and grow Yolo Cannolo into a retail shop. For now, they're living out their cannoli dreams as a duo simply having fun. Take it from their business name where "Yolo" stands for "You only live once."

"[The name] reflects what we're doing ourselves," Emma said. "We both just quit our jobs, and we're all in."

Jeff added a disclaimer.

"I do want to specify: It's nothing against Yolo County, and we're not from Yolo County," he said with a laugh. Δ

Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal happily consumes the cannolo at both ends. Send chocolate chips for dipping to [email protected].