Rugelach - Tuesdays with Dorie

This week's baking pick, Rugelach, comes to us from Piggy of Piggy's Cooking Journal. It was an exciting bake - I have never made anything like this before.

I find these pastries to be very European, not Brit or American. My neighbor Mitka, who is from Bosnia, often brings over delicious pastries that usually have fruity, nutty fillings - the Rugelach remind me of her baking. We sit around looking at pictures in baking books, drinking Turkish coffee. A nice little break from the humdrum.

The pastry was a pleasure to make in the food processor (seems Dorie likes the food processor a lot). When it came to rolling the dough however my confidence dimished somewhat as the pastry would not form a circle, rather a map of Spain in the first batch and a distorted rectangle in the second. So the roll-ups are a bit wonky but they have held together and my office consumers will not be not looking for symmetry.

I used three different kinds of jam fillings - raspberry jam, apricot jam and guava jelly, then sprinkled either walnuts or pecans on them, followed by raisins plumped by steeping them in boiled water. Could not get currants anywhere near me. My first batch stayed in the fridge overnight and was a lot easier to handle than the second batch which started getting too soft and tricky to roll - I kept these in the fridge for only 1-1/2 hours. The pastries look as if they'll taste good; I'm looking forward to doing my own taste test tomorrow.

Thank you Piggy for this pick - I think it will be a "make again."