Rugelach

My mom has always been a fan of jam-and-piecrust tarts. My grandma used to make them out of piecrust scraps and whatever jam was in the house. Rugelach is similar to jam-and-piecrust tarts, and equally popular with my mother. It's a traditional Jewish cookie-type thing, with a rich, but not sweet, cream cheese dough rolled with a filling. I've seen chocolate and brown sugar cinnamon, as well as fruit and nut. These are a fruit and nut and cinnamon sugar rugelach, the recipe for which I stole and altered from one on epicurious.com. There are seemingly a bunch of steps, but it really isn't that hard to make, and the end product is definitely worth it!!

Rugelach
Dough:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup softened Earth Balance (margarine)
8 oz tofutti cream cheese, softened

Filling:
1/2 cup sugar mixed with 1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup each apricot preserves and seedless raspberry jam (or whatever fruits you like, do try to use good jam though, not the HFCS crap)
1 1/4 cups walnuts finely chopped
Plain soy/rice milk for brushing cookies
4 tsp sugar, for sprinkling

1. Beat together margarine and tofutti cream cheese with an electric mixer (or in the trusty Kitchenaid!)

2. Add the flour and salt and stir until a soft dough ball forms

3. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm -- at least 8 hrs.

*wait*

Preheat the oven to 35o degrees

4. Take the dough out of the fridge and divide it into four portions. If you don't work fast with dough, put the other 3 back in the fridge wrapped up.

5. On a well floured clean counter (or whatever you normally would roll your pie crusts on), roll the dough out into a 12X18 inch rectangle. It's very important that it does not stick to your counter or your rolling pin. You don't want to have to reroll because the dough will get tough.

The rectangle need not be perfect

6. Spread 1/4 cup of jam/preserves evenly over the rectangle

This one is Apricot. Note the chunks of Apricot. They won't hurt anything.

7. Sprinkle a heaping 1/4 cup of walnuts over the jam.

8. Sprinkle 2 tbsp cinnamon sugar over the nuts and jam

9. Starting with whatever LONG side looks easier to you, begin rolling the dough up, jelly roll style. Again, you want to roll the long side, not the short side. It should be 18 inches long in the end.


10. Place your Rugelach-Log on a lightly greased baking sheet (you'll thank me when the jam melts), and repeat with other 3 balls of dough. When you've got all 4 logs done, refrigerate them for about 20 minutes to firm up the dough again.



11. Once out of the fridge, brush the tops with milk and sprinkle with reserved tsp of sugar. Then cut the logs at approximately 1 inch intervals, but do not cut all the way through the dough! I alternate doing them on the diagonal so I get triangle cookies. You could do them straight too to get rectangle cookies. I've also found a pizza cutter in a stabbing motion works better than a knife.

12. Bake for 45-50 minutes until golden brown. Wait as as long as you can for them to cool, then cut them the rest of the way though.

Mmm.. I wish I was eating one right now.