Tuesday's With Dorie-Rugelach!

This week's recipe was chosen by Piggy of Piggy's Cooking Journal and all I can say is, Thank you, Piggy!  I hadn't heard of this called rugelach, but have had something similar before and knew just by looking at the picture in Dorie's book, Baking From My Home To Yours, that I'd like these.  And darn it all, I DO LIKE THEM!  Got rid of most of these little flaky crescent fat-laden pieces of heaven as quickly as I could!  Please go to Piggy's link above and get this recipe.  It will be a great addition to your holiday baking.

These were actually quite easy to make, especially with only four simple ingredients in the dough; flour, butter, cream cheese (I used the less fat one) and salt.  Pulse those together in a food processor until it is crumbly and about the size of pebbles.  Don't pulse it too much.  I dumped this from the bowl to the counter and it came right together with my hands so easily.    Refrigerate the dough for a few hours, roll out, add the fillings, slice with a pizza cutter.  After rolling each one up, starting with the wide end, bake them, then wait ever so patiently for them to cool.  Then you have perfectly crispy, flaky, just sweet enough little bites of yum!  I sprinkled the tops with some turbinado sugar, which gave them a nice little crunch.

Now for the fillings.  I used apricot jam on one half and raspberry preserves for the other.  Both were sprinkled with a little cinnamon and sugar after brushing on the jam with a pastry brush.  Then some toasted chopped pecans were sprinkled on.  Since Dorie's recipe also has some chocolate, I also added about one tablespoon to half of each flavored dough.  If you ask me, simplicity is best here.  My favorite were the apricot jam ones with just the cinnamon/sugar and pecans--no need for the chocolate.  I didn't think it was there enough to taste and if you put too much on, they would be too hard to roll up.  All kinds were still really good though.  The danger here is the delightful pastry crust, it almost doesn't matter what you do to it, it would still be good.  I heard Nutella spread on it is good, sprinkled with some chopped hazelnuts.  Yep, that sounds good!  These would be great to serve at a baby or bridal shower or really any shindig.  Okay, I'm going to stop talking about them now!  Now for some photo interlude-----

Full plateful.   Whoops, one fell off.   (The apricot jam filled section.)

Yummy, tasty little morsel.

ummm, crunch, yum.   Hmmm, where did they all go?

Gasp!  I didn't, I couldn't--please tell me I didn't eat them all!

Three Cheers for Rugelach!

(The raspberry preserves section.  Sorry, I must have forgotten the flash on these guys or something.)

Tasty!

Somebody stop me!

I wish somebody would have stopped me!

I wish there were still some more rugelach!

I wish my tummy didn't hurt so bad!

Now really, do you honestly think I could/would eat a whole stick of butter, 4 oz. of cream cheese, and all the other stuff in these!  Okay, I probably could have--but I really just tasted one of each!  And I loved them!  I'm just saying, go to Piggy's blog and get this recipe--but wait, I say that every week--so do yourself a better favor and go buy Dorie's book!