Baking with Julia: Rugelach... Divine!

 

This week's Baking with Julia recipe is Rugelach.  A lovely pastry cookie filled with apricot lekvar, dried fruits and nuts.   I've made Julia's lekvar several times for wedding cake filling.   It's so good!   And simple.   Cooked dried apricots with brown sugar, and almonds.  All pureed into the spreadable paste.   The lekvar is spread on the cream cheese pastry dough, topped with nuts and more dried fruit, then rolled and baked.    Simple, not too sweet and so pretty. The dough is made in the mixer.  Emergency subject change and news flash.  My first Kitchen Aid mixer is broken.  I was making many, many croissants, and used the paddle to work together the detrempe.   On the last batch... snap.    All motor, no action.  I have another mixer, but that  was the first one I bought for the bakery and she'll be off to the repair shop for a quick repair.  It's funny, that little mixer always seemed a little more fragile than the others.   Today, I'm working in the house with the mixer that gets the least amount of use.   We should be in good hands.

Back to the dough.  The dough is made with cream cheese.  It works together beautifully and is very soft and easy to work with.   Since the dough is going to be rolled into a rectangle, it's always a good idea to shape the dough into that shape before chilling.   So pretty!

I really like apricots and prunes.  For this recipe's lekvar, I used about 2 cups of apricots and a few prunes for color and taste.  The almonds were toasted, slivered and worked really well.  I really like the color of the finished product.  It tastes and smells SO good!

The recipe for the Rugelach requires lots of prep in little bowls.   Nothing too fussy, but you need to make sure you'll all set before you start to fill the dough.  This is kind of an ugly photo, but wanted to show all the components set to go.

The rolls chilled for four hours, and then were egg washed, cut and rolled and a delightful nut, sugar, cinnamon combo.   I wasn't planning to stay up late and wait to bake them, but I'm in for the long haul with this recipe.   There must be something good on TV!

We really liked the recipe.  I'm not positive that they were completely done, but they were nicely caramelized and had been in the oven for 30 minutes.   The dough was still tender and soft, I was expecting a little crunchier.   The fruit and nuts were really good.

Just click the link to read more entries for Rugelach on the Baking with Julia  website.  In two weeks we'll be making Irish Soda Bread!  Another great recipe.  if you're looking the the recipes, the host each week will add the recipe to their post.  It should be one of the first posts of the group.  Anyone can join the fun.  Pick up a copy of the book and start to blog!