Rugelach

What is this? Another unusual bake that no one’s ever heard of before? Well you’d be right there. As you can probably tell I’m pretty obsessed with foreign baking, and over the course of the year I’ve been really pushing that side of my cooking. In my town there’s this really old bookshop that has a massive cookbook section, full of every style, theme, and cuisine of cookbook you could imagine. I love flicking through the books there, making mental notes of any unusual flavours, techniques, and ideas to give a go.

I first came across these in a Nordic recipe book and I immediately knew they’d be something I’d want to work on myself. Despite finding them in a Nordic cookbook though, these are actually a Jewish pastry, mainly found in the middle east. The dough is made with cream cheese which creates a really interesting, soft texture. These are then stuffed with apricot jam, nuts, raisins and cinnamon which makes them super moreish.

I quite like these as small, one-mouthful bites, but if you want to make them chunkier you can easily do this by cutting your circle into 6 or 8 triangles, rather than 12 like I have. I also haven’t tried this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this filling works really well with shortcrust, puff, or even filo pastry, so you can really play around with these to suit your personal taste.

Recipe

Makes 24

Time: 45 minutes plus chilling and baking

Ingredients

• 230g Cream cheese
• 250g Unsalted butter
• 155g Caster sugar, plus 3 tbsp for dusting
• ½ tsp Salt
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 300g Plain flour
• 40g Light brown sugar
• 1 ½ tsp Ground cinnamon
• 140g Raisins
• 140g Walnuts, finely chopped
• ½ cup Apricot jam
• 1 Large egg, beaten

Method

1. Put the cream cheese and butter into a bowl and whisk until light and pale. Add 55g of the caster sugar, salt and vanilla and mix again to combine. Slowly add the flour and mix slowly until a dough forms.
2. Roll the dough into a ball. Then cut the ball into quarters, roll each quarter into a ball and wrap in cling film. Leave in the fridge for an hour.
3. Meanwhile make the filling. Put the 100g of the caster sugar, the brown sugar, ½ tsp cinnamon, raisins and chopped walnuts into a bowl and mix together.
4. Lightly flour a surface and roll each dough ball out into a 9 inch circle. Spread the apricot jam over the circles and sprinkle with some of the filling mix, pressing it into the dough slightly.
5. Cut the dough circle into 12 wedges. Then, starting at the wide end of the wedge roll the dough up like a croissant.
6. Line a baking tray with baking paper and put the rolled up cookies on the tray, making sure the point where the folded bit of pastry ends is underneath. Chill for 30 minutes.
7. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Lightly brush each biscuit with the beaten egg. Then combine the rest of the caster sugar and cinnamon in a bowl and sprinkle over the biscuits.
8. Bake the rugelach in the oven for 15-20 minutes until golden brown and crisp.
9. Leave to cool on a wire rack and then serve!

Thanks for reading!

Emma x