Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Baking With Julia- Rugelach

ready to roll by Teckelcar
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 by Teckelcar
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.

4 comments:

Laura said...

Love the apple butter filling idea! I think the baking directions were definitely off in the book, next time try baking the cookies upright with the seam side down to prevent the filling from coming out. I bet your family loved them!

smarkies said...

apple butter does sound good! It was a time consuming exercise though - a tasty cookie that takes planning and lots of free time.

Diane said...

Tasty though it was, it was extremely time consuming. Eh, we'll make up for it with the Irish Soda Bread, which takes no time at all.

So what was the verdict of the rest of the family?

Cher Rockwell said...

Apple butter - mmmm :-)
This was definitely a project - as tasty as it was, I think I will stick to cookies that provide quicker gratification....