Baking With Julia- Rugelach

ready to roll, a photo by Teckelcar on Flickr.

It's Tuesday and that means I'm probably "Baking with Julia."

The first recipe this month is a doozy of a cookie, in fact I never even considered it as a cookie. I just thought of it as a rather messy and very tasty pastry. Either way it is called rugelach and I like it.

I was a bit dismayed at first when I saw I had to chill the dough twice and the high prune content. I couldn't do anything about the chilling, but I did do something about the prunes. The recipe calls for either prune or apricot lekvar, both of which are a sort of prune/apricot butter. Well, why not substitute apple butter for the lekvar? The apple butter would certainly work with all the cinnamon and nuts.  So that is exactly what I smeared on the dough before sprinkling on the dried fruits and nuts. For the fruit I opted for a mixture of dried apples and cranberries with walnuts rounding it all out.Then the whole mess got rolled up, chilled, sliced and baked.

rugelach, a photo by Teckelcar on Flickr.

Baking turned out to be a bit of a challenge. Or rather the post baking cool down. I waited a smidge too long and had a devil of a time getting it all off the paper I lined the cookie sheet. I had to bust out my silpat baking mat for the later batches. The rugelach is very tasty and the dough has a wonderful flavor that nicely counters the dried fruit and nuts.

I'm not sure if I'll do this again, but it is very good. I need to see what the rest of the family thinks of it. Jake thought it was very good, we'll see about the rest tomorrow.