The Rugelach That Won Over France

I was so excited to become part of the baking and blogging world…almost 3 years ago now!  When we started “Baking with Julia”, one of the first recipes we did was Rugelach.  At that time I had never heard of, nor tasted Rugelach, and neither had my tasters.  We knew then, we were in for a great adventure.  That Rugelach had a similar butter and cream cheese dough with some flour and sugar mixed in but the filling was very different.  We made our own prune lekvar and then added nuts and dried fruit and then the pieces were rolled in sugar and cinnamon.  They were beautiful and everyone enjoyed them.

This “Rugelach that won over France” recipe was a bit different.  I found the dough to be easy to work with in the initial stages…kind of broke easily when you sliced the dough.

The filling for this recipe is sweetened coconut, chocolate, dried cherries, and pecans…and the dough lightly buttered and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. The dough is filled and then rolled into 12in logs and frozen for an hour to help with the cutting.

After an hour of chilling, they receive an egg wash and sanding sugar sprinkled on top.  This is where things got difficult.  I had no problem cutting the rolls except that very often I would hit a dried cherry or pecan piece and that would make the dough tear apart.  I found it hard to keep them looking “pretty” and there wasn’t much I could do about it.  Perhaps my ingredients weren’t chopped finely enough but it would have been hard to make them much smaller. Anyway, did the best I could and popped them into the oven.  Baked them the full 17 min as instructed to ensure the centers would be cooked…might have been a little long in my oven.

 

I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction I would get from my tasters, but surprisingly everyone loved these!  My in-laws were part of the tasting this time and my mother-in-law said, and I quote, “I am wild about these cookies”!!! They both couldn’t get enough of them.  They were small cookies so you had to have a handful to feel satisfied…and I even made them bigger than was called for in the recipe.  I didn’t think they were as pretty as the other rugelach that we made but it seems that they are just as yummy!