TWD - Rugelach

I was super excited to see that Piggy of Piggy’s Cooking Journal chose rugelach for this weeks TWD baking adventure. I have never eaten rugelach and I had certainly never baked rugelach! After carefully reading through the recipe I realized two things. The first realization was that my grandmother made something similar to this with leftover pie crust! She would roll out the scraps, brush the dough with melted butter, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, cut into triangles, roll, and bake. Yum, yum, yum! The second realization was that this recipe contained both fruit and chocolate. As discussed in the Chocolate Chunker post, I do not care for fruit mixing it up chocolate!


I decided to make half the batch with the recipe more or less as written (I didn't use currants because I didn't have any) and I found that I didn't really care for apricot preserves with the mini semi-sweet chocolate chips that I used. My official taste tester didn't really like them either so I took them to the office and unloaded them on my co-workers.



My second batch was entirely different story ... mmm mmm good. I loved them so much that I refused to take them to work and share with my co-workers! It is my intention to consume each and every one of them by myself!


I substituted the apricot jam with caramel apple jam, skipped the chocolate and currants, and used pecans. I made the jam myself using this recipe. The jam was overally sweet and didn't taste very "caramelly" but it was really good! I've sinced used it on an english muffin and as a topping for ice cream. I'm going to mess around with the jam recipe and try to develop a stronger caramel flavor. I am totally in love with the apple rugelach and will surely make more as soon as I finish eating this batch.

In the following photo, you can see the tiny chunks of apple peeking out of the dough.

In my excitement, I forgot to brush the cookies with the egg wash and sprinkle them with coarse sugar prior to baking but I still think they turned out great! Please check out the other TWD bakers to see all the other amazing twists on rugelach.