Rugelach
- 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, room temperature
- 1 teaspoon lemon, zest of, finely minced
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup powdered sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon table salt
- 1 cup walnuts, finely chopped
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1 pinch table salt
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon water
- coarse sugar
- Cream butter, cheese, and zest with a mixer on medium speed.
- Sift dry ingredients and add; blend just until incorporated (use a wooden spoon if hard to mix).
- Shape dough into a thick log and divide into three 8-oz. portions.
- Wrap each piece in plastic and flatten into a disk.
- Chill dough overnight before using.
- Preheat oven to 350u0b0; line baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Prepare (but keep separate) walnuts, cinnamon-sugar (mix 3/4 cup sugar with the 1 TBS cinnamon), melted butter, egg-water wash (mix egg with the 1 tsp water), and sprinkling sugar.
- Lightly dust work surface with flour.
- Flatten a chilled dough disk lightly with rolling pin, then roll it into a 12" circle, 1/8" thick.
- Flip dough often to prevent sticking.
- Ragged edges are normal.
- If there are big gaps in the dough, just trim off a little dough from another area (any place it goes over 12") and patch it in inches.
- Lightly brush the dough with melted butter; sprinkle 1/4 cup cinnamon-sugar over the entire surface.
- Then sprinkle 1/3 cup chopped walnuts on the sugar.
- With the rolling pin, gently press the nuts into the dough all the way across the circle-this will help keep the nuts in place when you roll up the cookies.
- Use a pizza wheel to cut 16 wedges-first cut the circle in half, then in half again to make quarters. Now cut each quarter in half, then again to make 16.
- Starting at the wide end of a wedge, roll it to the center of the circle to make a crescent.
- Place on a prepared baking sheet, point down, spacing 1" apart.
- Gently brush cookies with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar.
- Bake 20-30 min., or until brown, rotating pan halfway through baking.
- Cool rugelach on racks.
- **Special Tip**:
- Rugelach rules are minimal-here is how to roll, assemble, and bake.
- Rolling: It's fine if you don't roll a perfect circle (I can't!). The dough will crack at the edges- that's okay! Once the round is roughly 12" across, patch gaps with dough trim from the sides.
- Assembling: Don't skimp on cinnamon-sugar and nuts when assembling rugelach. You'll think it's overloaded inside, but most of the cookie's flavor comes from the filling. Coarse sugar sprinkled on top makes festive-looking rugelach, but if you don't have it, just use a good amount of regular sugar.
- Baking: Of these three rules, baking is most critical. Rugelach must be baked long enough-they're thick in the middle and will take longer to bake than most other cookies. Your goal is a cookie with rich browning all the way around-but not too much!
unsalted butter, cream cheese, lemon, flour, powdered sugar, salt, walnuts, sugar, ground cinnamon, salt, unsalted butter, egg, water, coarse sugar
Taken from www.food.com/recipe/rugelach-115885 (may not work)