The Rugelach Rebuttal

Delicious little chocolate filled cookies

In a much belated response to Gordon’s rugelach post a little while ago, I made it my mission to find a good Israeli recipe for rugalach. So after much internet research I finally found a great recipe in one of my cousin’s older cookbooks.

You can really put in any filling you like, varying from nuts to fruit flavorings, whatever your suits your fancy. I decided to go with chocolate knowing all my very willing taste testers would all be happy with that. I experimented with a number of different chocolate variations, first starting with a chocolate syrup, chocolate chips, and then a chocolate spread. All where tasty but I personally felt the spread was the most delicious, so I give that in the recipe below.

Here’s the recipe….

(as translated from the original Hebrew which is why it’s metric, I did my best to convert to US also)

Dough:

30 grams (2 Tablespoons) yeast

3/4 cup water or milk

1 Tablespoon sugar

4 cups flour

4 egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar

a bit of salt

200 g.  (14 Tablespoons) cold butter

Filling:

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate

Glaze:

1 Egg White

1 Tablespoon water

Preheat the oven to 180 C or 350 F. Warm your desired liquid (the milk or the water), and mix with the yeast and sugar. Let stand in a warm place 10-15 minutes until the mixtures begins to froth (this means the yeast is activating!)

Mix the flour, egg yolks, 1/2 cup sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Then mix the yeast mixture with the flour mixture, it will appear to be dry, but don’t worry, this is normal.

Cut the butter into small chunks. Begin to combine the butter with the dough by mixing in a few chunks of butter at a time. Continue to mix until all the butter is combined and the dough is soft and smooth.  If the dough still sticks to your hands slowly add a bit more flour.

Divide the dough into 6 pieces. Roll out each piece on a floured surface making a thin circle about 20 cm (7-8 in) in diameter. Cut 12 triangles from the dough.

Mix the ingredients for the filling and a spoonful in the middle of each triangle. Roll each triangle from the wide side to the small tip. Shape each cookie into a half circle. Place each cookie on a greased baking sheet 2 cm away from each other. Brush on the glaze atop each cookie.

Optional Finish: Mix 3 tablespoon sugar and 2 teaspoons cinnamon and sprinkle on top the glaze.

Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Delicious little chocolate filled cookies

Mixing in the butter

Cut the dough into 6 pieces

Cut rolled out dough into 12 triangles

Spread filling onto triangles

Roll from fat end to little end

A sprinkle of cinammon sugar topping

Left Over Dough: You can freeze the remaining dough in an airtight container. Even go as far as roll out the extra dough, cover with plastic wrap or baking paper, place in a plastic bag and freeze until ready to use.

Enjoy!