Rugelach

Christmas came and went... more posting on pre-Christmas and Christmas later.

I just have to post this.... Oh my! These Rugelach are delicious! I was inspired by Cream Puffs in Venice and Bakingsheet, SOLD! I JUST had to make these on my day off.

I browsed a bit for more recipes just to have a better idea of what it really is and what I did was to take the pastry recipe from Allrecipes (no egg washing though; just pressed in some brown sugar before baking) and the filling recipe from Cream Puffs in Venice (omitted the water as I mixed everything together and spread on pastry instead of spreading the jam first - yup, I am not very patient).

The reason for modifying from 2 recipes is because I made roast potatoes for Christmas and have sour cream left in the fridge - perfect to use it up and I skipped the raisin filling simply because I don't like raisins.

So, the recipe I have used is as follows :

Pastry :

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup salted butter
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
1/3 cup sour cream
1/2 cup white sugar

Filling (mix all till well blended) :

1 cup walnuts, finely ground (I chopped them very finely with knife as not too keen to clean the electric mill just for this - and then I toasted them a bit as I was worried about "raw" walnuts taste)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup soft brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 cup apricot jam (I used Dalfour)

Method :

1. Cut cold butter and cream cheese into cubes.
2. In food processor pulse flour, salt, butter or margarine, cream cheese and sour cream until crumbly.
3. Shape crumbly mixture into four equal disks...wrap each disk and chill 2 hours or up to 2 days.
4. Roll each disk into a 10 inch round keeping other disks chilled until ready to roll them. I rolled the dough on top of lightly floured 10 inch round cutting board for control of shape.
5. Sprinkle round with sugar/nut filling mixture but I have decided to leave a 1 inch diameter from the centre point to avoid "overfilling". With chefs knife or pizza cutter, cut each round into 12 wedges. Roll wedges from wide to narrow, you will end up with point on outside of cookie.
6. Place on ungreased baking sheets, point down. (I ran out of Glad bake sheets from baking tons of chocolate chip cookies over Christmas and used lightly floured aluminium foil)
7. Press soft brown sugar on every rugelach and chill rugelach 20 minutes before baking.
8. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).
9. After rugelach are chilled, bake them in the center rack of your oven 25 minutes until lightly golden. Cool on wire racks.

Rugelach all ready to be baked
Rugelach being cooled on wire rack
Close-up of rugelach on wire rack

They were gone once pictures were taken. That tells you how good they are. Thanks to Cream Puffs in Venice, Bakingsheet and Allrecipes!

P/S : I made a little batch again with Nutella spread and 4 Hershey's chocolate chip in each rugelach. And they are just amazing!

They do look like chocolate filled mini croissants!