Linda Shapiro is the source of this dish. Although I have a lot of rugelach recipes, this one is by far the best.
| Prep Time: | 55 mins |
| Cook Time: | 22 mins |
| Additional Time: | 2 hrs |
| Total Time: | 3 hrs 17 mins |
| Servings: | 48 |
| Yield: | 4 dozen |
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup unsalted butter
- 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
- ⅓ cup sour cream
- ½ cup white sugar
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1 cup finely chopped walnuts
- ½ cup raisins
Instructions
- Cut cold butter or margarine and cream cheese into bits. In food processor pulse flour, salt, butter or margarine, cream cheese and sour cream until crumbly.
- Shape crumbly mixture into four equal disks. Wrap each disk and chill 2 hours or up to 2 days.
- Combine sugar, cinnamon, chopped walnuts, and finely chopped raisins.
- Roll each disk into a 9 inch round keeping other disks chilled until ready to roll them. Sprinkle round with sugar/nut mixture. Press lightly into dough. With chefs knife or pizza cutter, cut each round into 12 wedges. Roll wedges from wide to narrow, you will end up with point on outside of cookie. Place on ungreased baking sheets and chill rugelach 20 minutes before baking.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).
- After rugelach are chilled, bake them in the center rack of your oven 22 minutes until lightly golden. Cool on wire racks. Store in airtight containers…they freeze very well.
- You can substitute mini chocolate chips for raisins — or use both and knock yourself out!
- Spread a thin layer of apricot jam over dough round using a pastry brush, then sprinkle with brown sugar and top with recommended sugar-nut mixture.
- Combine some cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl. Roll rugelach in cinnamon sugar before placing them onto the baking sheets.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 101 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 8 g |
| Cholesterol | 16 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 0 g |
| Protein | 1 g |
| Saturated Fat | 4 g |
| Sodium | 28 mg |
| Sugars | 3 g |
| Fat | 7 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
I don’t have a food processeur. I’m basic. This recipe is good, but not authentic.
This is without a doubt the absolute best recipe I have ever used to make these!!!!! I use seedless raspberry jam and mini chocolate chips for filling and use the back of a spoon to lightly press the chips into the dough. Instead of rolling into a circle, I roll this into a rectangle, add filling, and then cut in half and then cut in strips and roll them. Less filling comes out and it is much easier and less mess.
Fabulous! Hint (learning from experience) chill everything! Chill the cut up butter, cream cheese and sour cream, chill the knife you cut with, even chill the food processor parts – keep your hands cool; and distribute the dairy items in the processor putting some flour on the bottom and more over the dairy. I have a medium size processor so I do half of the mix at a time leaving the first half in the fridge while processing the second part. Cold everything is key to getting the crumble. Yummy!!!!
Fantastic! Literally the ONLY rugelach recipe one needs 🙂 I did a date/nut/brown sugar, and then I piped out dark chocolate stripes on top …. And then because I had leftover pears I half cooked in the stovetop a basic apple (sub pears) pie/butter/cinnamon/walnuts and lots of fiber mixture and then filled my regulach with that. Highly recommend to try with any fillings. I love this recipe. Thanks mama! (The ones picture follow the recipe exactly, except I am terrible at rolling crescents … BUT!!! U can really see the flakiness I of this beautifully forgiving pastry cookie whatever crust 🙂
This was my first time to make these delicious cookies. I prepared the dough the night before like suggested and what a great time saver. I rolled these out and baked early this morning. Wow! My house smelled so good as they were baking. I had to try one once they had cooled down and it did not disappoint. I know I had these before, I thought it was my first time trying them but I know I have them before with apricot jam or something similar….. this was truly a great recipe. I will make these again! Thank you for sharing this recipe.
Very rich pastry; very bland overall cookie. This is the first time I’ve had rugelach. It didn’t live up to the hype for me. If I’m going to spend this much time making a cookie, it is going to be time spent making something much more flavorful than these.
I’d give it 5 stars, but I tweaked the recipe and combined it a bit with a Martha Stewart recipe- added just shy 1/2 cup of sugar and 3 egg yolks to the dough mix. Used both apricot and blackberry preserves. Delish!
This is my go-to recipes. I follow it exactly but add a step to make this an A plus- I sprinkle sugar or cinnamon sugar across the top before baking. It gives it an extra nice little crunch. Some variations I have tried are: mini chocolate chips (no additional sugar necessary), apricot jelly and currants (sugar on top), pumpkin butter, and cinnamon (rolled in cinnamon before baking). Super fun to experiment further
Such an easy and delicious recipe.. no changes were made perfect just as is.. I found that the longer the cookies chilled the better the outcome. This is def a keeper
The dish is very attractive and the recipe is easier than that. Thanks for sharing with us. I will definitely try it at my home.
Alright, I had a problem and I have no clear idea as to the source. The first time I made the dough, I had to thaw the butter. I also used a slightly-too-small processor (the blade jammed). Still, the dough came out fine. I got a new processor and made this 3 times with butter right out of the frig. The dough looked crumbly, but rolled horribly, with sugar or flour. The more I tried to fix it, the worse it turned out. Another recipe suggested doing a bit of kneading before dividing, but that didn’t help. I chilled it longer than 2 hours, to no avail. I saw that someone thought that the dough was pulsed too long, so I wonder if the more powerful processor is the source. I’m open to suggestions. Oh, regarding raisins, I found a tip that said to dust them with flour before chopping. That worked like a charm. Then I put the filling items in the processor and that came out even better!
Oh, boy! I love making Rugelach, and this recipe is a winner! I didn’t have sour cream, so I substituted plain Greek yogurt. I had leftover homemade almond paste, so I rolled it into two large discs for filling half of these dough circles, and added chopped almonds. For the remaining two dough discs, I used the traditional cinnamon-sugar mixture with chopped walnuts. I have always brushed my dough with melted butter before adding nuts and cinnamon-sugar, and I noticed this recipe doesn’t include that. No matter… these baked up beautifully and I love the tips about rolling the cinnamon sugar into the dough and then chilling the filled rugelach before baking. Awesome! This will replace my old tattered Rugelach recipe from now on.
I make them a lot smaller than what this says only because it makes a perfect bit. You could eat a dozen of these they are so good and so flakey. I have even thought this would make a good pie crust.
I took the advice of brushing on a small layer of apricot jam first. They aren’t as good as I was hoping they would be.
I made and treated the dough as written. The only change I made was to brush it lightly with apricot jam (first puree the lumps out!) before pressing the walnut/spice mixture into the dough. This is an excellent recipe. Thank you very much Jackie!
Love this recipe. It’s well detailed & gives great instruction for doing all the prep necessary especially the part about refrigerating the dough is a must so you can work with it. Lots of variation on fillings. My personal favorite is apricot & raspberry jam. The only tweek I made is to do an egg wash
I’m not sure where I went wrong… maybe my butter wasn’t incorporated enough, because I refrigerated my firmed rugelach for a couple of hours prior to baking and they were swimming in butter when I took them out of the oven. Haven’t tasted them yet – I’m sure they’re good – but I’m not sure why they’re just swimming in melted butter. 🙁
These are exactly like my Czech Grammy Novak makes each x-mas only she uses pecans, no raisins, and liberal amounts of powdered sugar to roll these out.
This may be my top cookie recipe. I drizzle honey and walnut with a little brown sugar and cinnamon on a disk. black raspberry and walnut on another, apricot on another. These just come out great every time.
Never thought anyone could improve on my mom’s recipe but this one is actually better. Here is a tip for rolling out the dough. Instead of using flour to keep it from sticking, we usually use a mixture of sugar and cinnamon. It is messy but it works and enhances the recipe.
my dough came a little sticky also. I just kneeded some flour in and was good. there ya go.