Recipe: Rugelach

Rugelach

Prep time: 30 minutes

Cook time: 50 minutes

Makes 44 cookies

Rugelach (pronounced RUHG-uh-luhkh) are bite-size, crescent-shaped cookies made with a rich cream-cheese pastry and filled with raisins or other fruit and nuts or poppy-seed paste.

This recipe is a favorite of retired Bee food writer Gwen Schoen. She recommended making the dough ahead and refrigerating it or freezing it until you are ready to bake.

Rugelach stores well at room temperature for a week or longer if wrapped airtight. The recipe is originally from Gourmet magazine.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup plus 4 teaspoons sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup apricot preserves or raspberry jam

1 cup loosely packed golden raisins, chopped

1 1/4 cups walnuts (1/4 pound), finely chopped

Milk for brushing cookies

INSTRUCTIONS

Whisk together flour and salt in a bowl. Beat together butter and cream cheese in a large bowl with an electric mixer until combined well. Add flour mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until a soft dough forms.

Gather dough into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap, then flatten (in wrap) into a roughly 7-by-5-inch rectangle. Chill until firm, 8 to 24 hours.

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line bottom of a 1- to 1 1/2-inch-deep large, shallow baking pan with parchment paper. Cut dough into 4 pieces. Chill 3 pieces, wrapped in plastic wrap, and roll out remaining piece into a 12-by-8-inch rectangle on a well-floured surface with a floured rolling pin.

Transfer dough to a sheet of parchment, then to a tray and chill while rolling out remaining dough in the same manner, transferring each to another sheet of parchment and stacking on tray.

Whisk 1/2 cup sugar with cinnamon.

Arrange 1 dough rectangle on work surface with a long side nearest you. Spread 1/4 cup preserves evenly over dough with offset spatula. Sprinkle 1/4 cup raisins and a rounded 1/4 cup walnuts over jam, then sprinkle with 2 tablespoons cinnamon sugar. Using parchment as an aid, roll up dough tightly into a log. Place, seam side down, in lined baking pan, then pinch ends closed and tuck underneath. Make 3 more logs in same manner and arrange 1 inch apart in pan.

Brush logs with milk and sprinkle each with 1 teaspoon of remaining granulated sugar. With a sharp large knife, make 3/4-inch-deep cuts crosswise in dough (not all the way through) at 1-inch intervals. (If dough is too soft to cut, chill until firmer, 20 to 30 minutes.)

Bake until golden, 45-50 minutes. Cool to warm in pan on a rack, about 30 minutes, then transfer logs to a cutting board and slice cookies all the way through.

Per cookie: 137 cal.; 2 g pro.; 15 g carb.; 8 g fat (4 sat., 2 monounsat., 2 polyunsat.); 17 mg chol.; 46 mg sod.; 1 g fiber; 10 g sugar; 52 percent calories from fat.

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