Cooking up Italian Style

We're studying Italy this week. As a part of our study, we made an Italian meal tonight. We made the sauce from scratch, with a recipe from a friend. It was delicious, as usual.
Since Kate had chosen a familiar meal for our study of Italy, I wanted us to be more adventurous with our dessert. We made modified cannoli, using sugar cones instead of the fried pastry, trying to make it so that Kate could do it more independently. I got a recipe for the filling. It was runny, so I added a little more sugar. Still runny. I added more sugar. Runny. I pulled out my corn starch. It thickened up a little more than the previous runny mess, but not much. I stuck the would be filling in the freezer in hopes it would help. Perhaps I should have drained the cheese, but I've not used it before and it didn't mention it in the recipe.

We learned a lesson today--sometimes things go your way:

And sometimes your cannoli filling runs all over the plate:

But Redi-whip and a maraschino cherry can make anything better.