TWD: Baking with Julia - Rugelach

The first of the March recipes for the Baking with Julia challenge is rugelach - a small, rich pastry cookie filled with all varieties of rich fillings. In spite of my dislike of plums, and by extension, prunes, I went ahead with the more or less traditional prune, fruit and nut filling.

Have I ever mentioned that one of my favorite cookies to bake is spritz? The dough can be mixed entirely with a hand mixer, then stuffed in a cookie press and squeezed out onto the cookie sheet. No muss, no fuss.

In other words, the antithesis of rugelach making.

The dough is a soft cream cheese dough, needing several hours in the refrigerator before rolling out and filling. It's spread with a paste made of ground prunes mixed with a bit of sugar and nuts. Dried fruits (raisins for me) and nuts (pecans in this case) are spread on top. The whole shebang is rolled up, then chilled again.

As a final step before baking, the roll is brushed with an egg wash and the cut cookies rolled in a cinnamon-sugar-pulverized nut mixture.

I made a half batch, partly because I was afraid I wouldn't like them, but equally afraid I would, if you know what I mean.

Rolling things around filling is not one of my better skills; my rolls barely met on the other side, but still held together (for the most part) through baking.  To my surprise, they smelled absolutely delicious while baking.

The taste was a revelation as well. The sweetness of the sugar and cinnamon balanced out the slightly tart taste of the prunes, while the butter and cream cheese kept the dough soft and flavorful. They are very definitely a rich treat; one cookie is incredibly satisfying.

Will I make them again? Maybe, though I may try the apricot filling (naturally, I found dried apricots at the store today, since I wasn't looking for them anymore) or possibly chocolate (nutella, maybe?). My final result wasn't very pretty (these are the best of the bunch), but on the whole, they were worth the effort.