Dec 20 / Erin

12 Days of Christmas: Walnut Brown Sugar Rugelach

I generally avoid baking things that I can’t pronounce, but I’ve been considering this holiday recipe in an old magazine for a few years. I was close to passing it by yet again when I decided to look the word rugelach up in the dictionary. The definition pretty much sealed the deal: pastry made with a cream cheese dough and different fillings.

Score.

You can find this particular recipe (courtesy of Martha Stewart) online, or Google for a variety of recipes. If you’re in a rush, you should skip this cookie because the dough requires chilling for several hours. But if you have some spare time, I recommend giving it a try.

Basically you mix butter, cream cheese and sugar to form the dough (the recipe said to use a food processor, but my KitchenAid mixer worked just fine.) Once the dough is chilled, you roll it out and then trace a plate to form a perfect circle of dough. Then sprinkle some brown sugar and walnuts on the circle, slice into 16 triangles and roll starting with the wide part of the triangle.

My secret was cutting the disc into quarters, then dividing each quarter into four even pieces.

Place the cookies on a baking sheet, and brush with a light egg wash (a beaten egg with some water) and bake!

The one downfall of my cookies was that the brown sugar leaked out while cooking and burned a little bit. Maybe using parchment paper on the baking sheet would have helped? Either way, the cookie was still pretty delicious, and you could taste just a hint of cream cheese in the flaky dough.

These aren’t the sweetest cookie in the world, but they are perfect with some coffee…and a plate of other cookies (including Peppermint and Chocolate Chip Chocolate Cookies, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Brownies and Coconut Snowball Cookies)!