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

Scale

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)

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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.