Tuesdays With Dorie: Rugelach

I was really looking forward to this week’s recipe. Over the years I’ve had my share of bakery-made (or, horrors, store-bought) rugelach, and I was looking forward to seeing what they taste like fresh from the oven.

Dorie recommends raspberry or apricot preserves; I doubled the batch to have enough for a potluck lunch on Sunday, and I planned to make half apple and half raspberry. As it turned out, the apple jelly I liquefied for the first half was enough for both, so they’re all apple. But while I was melting the jelly, it hit me: cherry. That was the way to go. Cherry jelly would have been insanely good.

Anyway, apple it was. Needless to say, I left out the currants.

The dough was easy to make and easy to work with. I hate rolling out dough almost as much as I hate fruit in my desserts, so I was worried about that part. But I used the plastic wrap the dough was refrigerated in as a shield between the rolling pin and the dough, and everything worked perfectly. I couldn’t get the dough into a perfect circle, of course, because I never can, but because the circle wound up being cut into 16 wedges, it didn’t matter.

Assembly was easy. Cutting was easy. Rolling up the cute little rugelach (rugelachen?) was easy. Even knowing when they were done was easy; I often have trouble with that part.

Really, the worst part of the whole endeavor was the waiting time; the dough has to be refrigerated for at least two hours before it’s rolled out, and the cookies have to be refrigerated for at least 30 minutes before you bake them. But even that wouldn’t matter if I’d spread the process out over a few days, as Dorie says works just fine.

And so?

Amazing.

The pastry was light and crackly, probably among the best two or three pastries I’ve ever made (or had!). The filling — apple jelly, cinnamon-sugar, and mini chocolate chips — was warm and absolutely delicious. (Oh, but if it had been cherry …)

Sadly, I made them on Friday night, intending them as our dessert. But Friday was also Halloween, and everyone had eaten so much candy by dinnertime that no one wanted dessert. (Well, #2 Son would have happily had some, but he was in another town trick-or-treating with a friend.)

I took them to a potluck Sunday afternoon, and they went like hotcakes, as they say. Everyone raved about them, and they still were light-years better than the bakery ones — extremely moist and flavorful. But they’d lost that lovely crackliness, which was my favorite thing about them.

If you want to try them yourself, head on over to Piggy’s Cooking Journal, where the recipe will be posted (and where you can check out her amazing food photographs). And if you want to see what the other TWD bloggers did with the recipe (and I’m sure there will be some great variations), work your way through the recently expanded blogroll at Tuesdays With Dorie.