Since we have been posting quite a few healthy recipes lately, I thought it was time to post something sweet and rather decadent. Recently I decided to make rugelach since I had been craving these amazing cookies for awhile but hadn’t made them since… I guess, since last summer. Rugelach is quite easy to make but a bit time consuming as you have to refrigerate the dough twice during the process. This time around I made the dough in the evening and then put it in the refrigerator overnight and finished making the cookies in the short period of time the twins went to preschool. Part of the dough I kept in the fridge and part in the freezer. Although both worked fine, I thought the frozen portion worked a bit better as the dough tends to start getting too soft too easily. I took the dough out of the freezer and after about 20 minutes I was able to start working with it after first pummeling it a bit with a rolling pin.
The recipe calls for nuts for the filling and eggs for the glaze, but I made a nut-and-egg-free batch for my boys. I shaped their cookies first to avoid any contamination with the walnuts later. I excluded the walnuts and lightly glazed the cookies with strong black coffee before sprinkling sugar on top.
Since I get lazy to make Rugelach, whenever I do I like to make a lot so I doubled the original recipe. If 64 cookies is too much for your family, know that you can freeze the dough and shaped cookies for up to two months (just do not glaze and bake before freezing).
Rugelach
From Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan
Makes 64
Dough
8 oz cold cream cheese, cut into large pieces
2 sticks (16 Tbsp) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp salt
Soften butter and cream cheese outside the fridge until slightly soft but still cool, about 10 minutes.
Put flour and salt in a food processor and drop the pieces of cream cheese and butter on top. Pulse about 6 times, then process, scraping until the dough is about to stick together, be careful not to let it form a ball on the blade.
Remove the dough from the processor and put it all together forming a ball. Divide it into four sections and shape each portion into a disk. Wrap disks in plastic wrap and refrigerate anywhere between 2 hours and 24 hours.
Filling
1 1/3 cup apricot jam
4 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ cup chopped walnuts
1 1/3 cup finely chopped (or chips) semi sweet chocolate (I used Ghirardelli Chocolate Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips)
½ cup golden raisins
Heat the jam in a microwave until it becomes liquid. Set aside.
Mix sugar and cinnamon. Set aside.
Shaping the Rugelach
Pull one of the bags of dough out of the fridge. If you have frozen them, you should remove about 10 to 20 minutes before and let stay in room temperature, and when you are ready to start rolling the dough remove the second one from the freezer.
On a lightly floured surface, roll dough into a 12-inch circle, then spoon a thin gloss of jam over the dough.
Sprinkle about ¼ of cinnamon sugar on top of the jam, and throw on top some walnuts, raisins and chocolate chips.
With a piece of wax paper, gently press the filling into the dough. Make sure to keep the wax paper for the next batch.
With a pizza wheel, cut the dough into 16 triangles as if you were slicing a pizza. Rool the dough up starting at the base of the triangle to look like a little croissant.
Making sure points are tucked under cookies, place rugelach on baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
Refrigerate cookies at least 30 minutes before baking. Like I mentioned before, the cookies can at this point be frozen for up to 2 months and when you ready to bake them don’t defrost, just add a couple of minutes to the baking time.
Baking
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Mix 1 egg and 1 tsp of water, and glaze rugelach. Sprinkle some sugar on top and bake the cookies for 20 to 25 minutes.
