Rugelach is the easiest and most versatile pastry yet
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If you’ve never tried rugelach, you’re in for a treat: made with easy cream cheese pastry, then rolled into cute triangles you fill with any kind of jam and nuts (maybe a couple extras) and roll up into tiny croissant shapes. They bake up into flavor-packed little bites that are somewhere between a pastry and a cookie.
There’s a lot going on in these classic Jewish pastries, and I’m here for all of it. I learned how to make rugelach from one of Dorie Greenspan’s excellent books. They’ve been in my Christmas cookie collection for well over a decade. I love that they have a unique texture you wouldn’t normally see in a cookie.
Even better is how versatile these cookies really are. My Great-Grandma Bee on the German side tells of cookie-like pastries they made from the ends of strudel. For her, it was a matter of not wasting any food. I’m convinced that rugelach follow from the same idea–something new made out of scraps of something else that was so good that people made it from scratch to start out from.
Regardless of if I’m right or not about the origins of rugelach, you’ll love these tiny little pastries for all of their complexities. They are RICH, but not too sweet. In a sea of hyper sweet desserts, rugelach is the dark horse that saves you from sugar overload.
Easy Rugelach
What even is a rugelach?
Rugelach is a rolled pastry made from cream cheese pastry dough that is rolled thinly, cut into triangles and filled with jam and sugar and nuts and maybe dried fruit before being rolled up into crescent like shapes. The texture of these is somewhere between a pastry and a cookie, more on the cookie side of life.
This is a favorite cookie-like confection among Jewish communities at Hannukah.
Why I love rugelach, and why you should too
- Complex: tangy from the cream cheese vs. the sweetness of the filling, the crunch of the pastry and buttery goodness all comes together into a perfect bite.
- The easiest laminated dough ever: Cream cheese pastry, made how I make it is fall-off-a-log simple, and it’s guaranteed to get you perfect dough that puffs into thin crispy layers.
- What’s in your fridge?: You can make rugelach with ANY kind of jam. There’s endless possibilities, and there are no bad choices. Whatever you have, you can make delicious rugelach. Think of this as more of a template than a recipe. I used pear butter and maple candied pecans for a very Fall-themed cookie.
- So much fun to make: We should all bake more things with pizza wheels. They cut the pastry perfectly making these pastries one of the most enjoyable things to make. And everybody loves to roll crescent shapes without exception.
Rugelach ingredients
- Cream Cheese Pastry
- Cinnamon sugar
- Egg yolk for an egg wash
- Pearl sugar for topping (optional) or more cinnamon sugar and nuts
Fillings
- Jam of any kind: apple butter, pear butter, raspberry jam, blueberry jam, strawberry jam, plum jam, poppy seed filling etc.
- Chopped nuts: chai spiced maple candied pecans or your favorites
- Raisins or other moist dried fruit
- Chocolate: mini chocolate chips or very finely chopped pieces
Tricks for making the best rugelach
- Roll pastry between sheets of parchment: This will keep the dough from sticking too much and will help you get a nice even layer of dough.
- Roll thinly and square: All the layers rolled up take longer to bake than you think they should to get brown. Roll the pastry thin and square up the edges for the prettiest rugelach.
- Have a friend help: Once the dough is rolled, you need to fill it quickly and get it into the oven before the butter starts melting all over the place. If two people can roll, you’ll get more in the oven, letting you bake 2 rounds of dough at a time vs. 1.
- Finely chop everything: These pastries are not very big, so whatever you place inside needs to be very finely chopped. Use kitchen shears to cut sticky pieces of dried fruit.
- Don’t throw away the ends: if there’s little weird pieces that aren’t quite triangles, bake them up too. We’re not wasting anything.
Easy Rugelach
- Total Time: 1 hour
- Yield: 36 cookies 1x
Description
A Hannukah favorite: Rich cream cheese pastry rolled, cut into triangles and filled with jam and cinnamon sugar and maybe some other things. Cut the dough into wee triangles and roll them up into little crescents before baking into gloriously crunchy lightly sweetened cookie like pastries.
Ingredients
- Cream Cheese Pastry (can be made with leftovers from another cream cheese dough recipe like Mini Quiches)
- 1/4 cup sugar (50 g)
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- About 1/4 cup any kind of jam (see notes)
- 1/3 cup nuts like maple candied pecans
- 1/4 cup raisins, dates, or apricots cut into very small pieces
- 1/4 cup finely chopped dark chocolate
- 1 egg yolk
- Pearl sugar or other decorative sugar (optional)
Instructions
- Set out cold pastry on the counter for about 5 minutes to warm up just enough to make it easier to roll.
- Preheat your oven to 350 F (180 C). Have a 1/2 sheet tray handy for baking the rugelach.
- Divide the dough into quarters if you made a whole batch of dough (the process is the same if you’re using less dough).
- Square up the edges of one of the pieces of dough with your hands. Keep the other pieces covered.
- Mix the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Have the other toppings nearby.
- Beat the egg yolk with 2 teaspoons of water to make an egg wash.
- Get out 2 pieces of parchment. Lightly sprinkle one of the sheets of parchment with flour, and then sprinkle flour on the top of your piece of dough.
- Place the dough on top of the parchment, then top with another piece of parchment. Basically here you have a dough parchment sandwich at this point.
- Bring the edge of the parchment to the edge of the counter and hold it in place with your hip.
- Roll the dough between the two sheets of parchment into a rectangle somewhere between 1/16” and 1/8” thick.
- Use a pizza wheel or knife to trim the long edges of the rectangle into a straight line.
- Spread the dough with jam, then a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar, some nuts, chocolate if you’d like, and some of the dried fruit. Try and keep the fruit and chocolate in the inside middle of the triangle as they can burn if they’re along the edges.
- Cut the dough into wide triangles. if there’s little weird pieces that aren’t quite triangles, bake them up too.
- Roll up the pieces from the wide end of the triangle to the tip to form crescents. Brush the cookies with egg wash, and then sprinkle them with either pearl sugar or more cinnamon sugar and nuts.
- Bake the rugelach for 24-28 minutes until the pastry is well-browned and crisp.
- Store the rugelach in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a week. Cookies can also be frozen for a couple months.
Notes
Use any jam!: apple butter, pear butter, raspberry jam, blueberry jam, strawberry jam, plum jam, poppy seed filling
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 30 minutes
- Category: Pastry
- Method: Bake
- Cuisine: Jewish
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cookie
- Calories: 121
- Sugar: 3
- Sodium: 62
- Fat: 9
- Saturated Fat: 5
- Unsaturated Fat: 0
- Trans Fat: 0
- Carbohydrates: 10
- Fiber: 0
- Protein: 1
- Cholesterol: 25
