Monday, February 26, 2018

Rugelach

These are my new favorite cookie. They are addictive bite sized pastries in cookie form. They are easy to make, hard to screw up, and infinitely variable. 

Ingredients

Dough:

1 c all purpose flour
4 oz (1 stick or .5 c) salted butter
4 oz brick cream cheese (1/2 a brick)
1 tsp sugar (I used vanilla sugar)
.25 tsp salt

Filling:

.25-.33 c jam or other spread of choice (see notes at end for suggestions)
.5 c finely chopped or ground nuts and/or dried fruit (see notes at end for suggestions)
2 tsp cinnamon sugar

Place flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a couple times to combine. Cut cream cheese into .5" chunks, add them to the food processor, and pulse a few more times until the cream cheese is broken down into smaller pieces. Cut the butter into .5" chunks, add them to the food processor and process until the dough comes together into a single lump.

Dump the dough out of the food processor onto some plastic wrap and shape it into a disk. Refrigerate until chilled through, about an hour.

Divide the dough disk into two pieces. On a piece of parchment paper dusted with flour, roll out the first piece of dough into a rectangle about 12" by 8". Spread 1/2 the jam or other spread in a thin layer, leaving .5" on one long edge of the rectangle bare. You can heat the spread up a little bit if necessary to make it easier to spread.

Sprinkle 1 tsp cinnamon sugar on top of the jam then spread 1/2 the nut/fruit mixture evenly on top of the jam.

Start rolling the long side of the dough into into a log 12" long, sealing the edge with your fingers. Wrap in plastic wrap or foil and place in the freezer for 15-20 minutes to firm up. It's easier to slice that way and will be flakier when baked. Repeat with the other piece of dough. 

Heat oven to 350

Once both logs of dough are firm, take them out of the freezer and slice them into 1/2" slices with a sharp knife. Place the slices, upright, seal side down, onto 2 cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. The lining is important to keep the filling from leaking and burning onto the cookie sheets. Gently press the slices to flatten the bottom so they are less likely to tip over. Some of the cookies will probably tip over and that is ok, it just means the filling will be a little more caramelized on the bottom. The cookies don't expand much so you don't have to leave more than an inch or so of space between them.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the tops are golden and the inner rolls of dough look mostly set. Watch them carefully toward the end as the dough burns quickly. Cool on the cookie sheets for a couple minutes until set.

I made mine with raspberry jam and ground almonds. It was extremely tasty. Makes between 40 and 50 small cookies.

Other things I plan to try:

Marmalade with ground almonds and dried cranberries
Strawberry jam with ground almonds or hazelnuts
Date or Fig spread with walnuts or pecans and raisins or currants
Pumpkin or apple butter with walnuts or pecans and cranberries
Date spread with unsweetened flaked coconut and some lime zest
Nutella with hazelnuts
Cherry jam with almonds and dried cherries and maybe some dark chocolate
Lemon curd with dried blueberries and almonds
Honey with pistachios 
Maple syrup with walnuts or pecans

I also plan to try adding a little more sugar to the dough next time and maybe some complementary spices. This recipe is like a blank canvass with all the possible variations.


Distracted Dish © 2013-2021