TWD - Rugelach

A new week and a new challenge.  This time we are baking Rugelach on page 325 of Baking with Julia. Our hosts this week are Margaret and Jessica , if you would like the recipe they will have it on their blogs.  If you want to see how everyone else did this week you can check that out here .   I was excited to try the Rugelach but was once again pretty intimidated.  I wanted to make the Apricot Lekvar (pg 449 BWJ) but I had never blanched OR toasted almonds before and was a little nervous about that.  Which of course caused me to procrastinate until the last minute!

After I finally decided to tackle it though it really wasn't difficult.  Surprise!!  I had no idea how simple blanching almonds was and how easily the skin comes off after.  Pretty cool!  I definitely OVER toasted them, I was getting bored watching them and moving them around, went to get a drink and came back to pretty toasty almonds LOL  It's all good.  I picked out the lighter ones in the batch and continued on :)

The lekvar came together very quickly, I chose to only do apricot because I know my family didn't want the prunes.  Hubs and I had eaten our fair share of prunes on our cleanse from a couple of weeks ago and don't really have any desire to revisit the flavour anytime soon!  So sad, I loved prunes normally!  Maybe one day I will be able to eat them again. 



2 cups of apricots ready for simmering



Blended into a beautiful bright orange

Mixing in the (overly)toasted almonds :)

Ready for the fridge

After I finished the Lekvar I got started on the Rugelach recipe.  Instead of waiting a couple of hours for butter to come to room temperature I cut it up into smaller cubes so it would warm up faster.  Patience is not a virtue I often claim to have!

Butter, cream cheese and sugar

Before flour

After.  It rolled up so nicely and was a lovely soft dough

The dough came together REALLY fast and before I knew it I had it wrapped and in the fridge.  I didn't have a lot of time left so I left it in the fridge overnight.  The next day I pulled it out of the fridge.  It was pretty hard at first.  I took some aggression out on it with the end of my rolling pin and that helped soften it up :)

I decided to only make two with the apricot lekvar, so I still have an entire jar left.  I will have to come up with something yummy to do with that!  I decided to melt some chocolate chips I had in the pantry and make a chocolate one, I also had leftover freeze dried raspberries from the tarts that we made a couple of weeks ago and I decided to crush these over the melted chocolate.   For the fourth roll I chopped up white chocolate, craisins and dried apricots.

Rolled up apricot lekvar coated in egg wash

rolled in cinnamon, sugar and nut mixture

Gooey mess :)

Just begging to be eaten

The Rugelach with the apricot lekvar are really good, the lekvar was not too sweet but had a nice fruity flavour and added a lovely texture.  The cinnamon, sugar, nut mixture over the outside took it over the edge.  I chose not to add nuts and dried fruit to the inside, it seemed like too much and I have picky selective kids.  I really wanted them to enjoy these.   The pastry was so flaky and the perfect vessel for the fruit, sugar and nuts.

The next one I baked was the white chocolate, apricot and cranberry filled rugelach.  I didn't cover it in cinnamon, I decided just plain sugar would be enough and wouldn't take away from the flavour of the fillings.  This combination of flavours was delicious and the chewyness of the fruit contributed nicely to the texture.  The flaky pastry.  Oh.my.gosh.  I really like this pastry!

Here is the white chocolate rugelach after I pulled it out of the oven.  I tried laying some flat and some on their side this time.  I really prefer the way they come out when they are layed on their side.  When I layed them flat they just spread more and looked kind of sad.  They still tasted fine though :)

Finally I baked the chocolate raspberry combination.  These ones I coated in a sugar/chocolate mixture.  I have a little shaker of chocolate dust to sprinkle over hot chocolate, so I combined this with the sugar to make the outside a little chocolaty as well.  I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as too much chocolate!  These were good too, but I think the fruit ones are going to be the favourite.  When I pulled them out of the oven I could smell the raspberry and there was a nice hint of it in the cookie itself.  Good for a chocolate fix!  However now I need to go for a run to remove any damage to my hips from tasting the different cookies!

Here is the chocolate raspberry, rolled in chocolate/sugar and ready to go in the oven.  You can see a little bit of raspberry peeking out. Yum.

After they came out of the oven, they smelled so good!

Finished product from left to right chocolate raspberry, white chocolate, cranberry and apricot, apricot lekvar

Next time we are making Irish Soda bread, so stay tuned!  I will do my best to NOT wait until the last minute on this one :/  I might even check out the recipe today (and actually read through the directions ha).  This has been so fun, I am enjoying baking with a community and going through the ups and downs with all of you!