Rugelach - Tuesdays With Dorie

Today’s Tuesdays With Dorie is a Jewish cookie called rugelach. I’ve heard of rugelach but was a little thrown off when the picture showed it as spiral cookies. The recipe has you roll the dough up jelly-roll style then slice and bake rather than traditionally roll them up as crescents. Rolling it up into a log makes it easier because you aren’t cutting out all these squares to roll up and you can freeze one and slice it if you need last-minute cookies.





The dough is a basic dough made of butter and cream cheese. Simple yet delicious. The filling is a little more work (but worth it!). First you spread on lekvar, which is essentially fruit butter. Then you add assorted dried fruit and nuts. I chose apricot lekvar, dried cherries, pecans, walnuts, and almonds.



For the lekvar, sure you could buy a jar, but why not make your own? Dorie included two recipes – prune and apricot lekvar. Prune didn’t appeal to me, so I went for apricot. It is so easy – you throw dried apricots, brown sugar, almonds, and lemon juice into a food processor and process until smooth. Done! No cooking, no letting it set. Done.



The hardest part about this recipe is the waiting. You make the dough then wait two hours. Roll out the dough, fill it, roll it back up, chill and wait at least four hours if not overnight. If you got up early enough, you could make this in one day, but I recommend making the dough the night before then assemble and chill again the next day.



I cut the rugelach recipe in half but not the lekvar. Even by cutting the recipe down, I still had plenty of filling and sugar mixture left. Looks like I’ll either be making another batch or some form of cinnamon roll.

Thanks to our hosts Jessica of My Baking Heart and Margaret of The Urban Hiker for the week! I hope you will join us next week when yours truly host Irish Soda Bread, just in time for St. Patrick’s Day :D