Preheat the oven to 425°F.

Lightly flour your surface and unroll both pie crusts. Use a 2 1/2-inch round cookie cutter to cut circles from the dough, then press each one into a mini muffin pan (here is a good one from Amazon) to create little pastry cups. You’ll probably need to reroll the leftover dough once or twice to get enough circles, which is completely fine.

Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the cups are golden brown and lightly crisp around the edges. Let them cool in the pan for about 10-15 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely. They crisp up even more as they cool.

While the cups cool, make the filling. Add the ricotta, powdered sugar, citrus zest, and vanilla to a bowl and mix until smooth and creamy. I actually prefer using powdered sugar only here instead of adding granulated sugar too because it gives the filling a much smoother bakery-style texture. Powdered sugar blends into the ricotta more easily and helps make the filling thick, creamy, and pipeable without that slight graininess regular sugar can sometimes leave behind. If your ricotta feels watery, make sure to drain it really well first because thick filling makes a huge difference with mini cannoli cups.

Transfer the filling to a zip-top bag or piping bag and refrigerate until ready to use.

Right before serving, pipe the filling into the cooled pastry cups. Top with mini chocolate chips and finish with a dusting of powdered sugar.

I highly recommend filling them right before serving because that keeps the pastry crisp instead of softening from the ricotta filling. This recipe makes about 24 mini cannoli cups depending on the size of your cutter and muffin pan.