Monday, January 23, 2006

Artery Clogging Cream Cheese Spirals or Rugelach


They may not look THAT appetising in the photographs, mainly coz my skill in rolling the dough into perfect crescents leave a lot to be desired, but taste wise, especially fresh from the oven, they are rather good.

The original recipe only gives the option for a sweet filling, but I took the liberty of making them half savoury, and half sweet.

Stuff:

250 gm cream cheese
250 gm butter, softened but not melted (yup, that's half a kilo of artery clogging ingredients)
3 tablespoons caster sugar

2 ½ cups plain flour, sifted

Filling:
Sweet:
1 cup chopped walnuts
2 tablespoons brown sugar (mixed into the chopped walnuts)

Savoury:
Beef bacon, bacon, luncheon meat, corned beef, whatever tickles your fancy, I'd say.

How to make:

1. Cream the butter and cream cheese in a bowl (ie, use a cake mixer and beat on high speed), with the sugar, until light and creamy. The mixture should taste....like cheesecake.

2. Sift the flours into the bowl, and mix with a spatula, until it all comes together into a clingy (like those needy girlfriends, ie, clingy) dough. Sprinkle more flour if its too sticky. Knead slightly, and divide into two portions and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Some books say 2 hours.

3. Roll out one portion ato about 5mm thick, and cut it into a round shape, using a plate as your template. Ie, put the plate on the rolled dough, and cut a circle.
4. Divide the circle into 12 portions... the book says 16, but I think 12 is better. My fat fingers can't handle such dainty morsels.

5. Sprinkle the chopped (finely) walnut and sugar mixture onto the circle of dough. Roll from the wide end of the piece, so that it forms a mini croissant. If using savoury filling, follow the same procedure, but with your savoury filling.

6. Brush with egg and bake in a preheated oven at 190C until brown.

7. Careful when popping into the mouth. And try to limit yourself to two pieces max, or you will have to spend an hour on the treadmill, running at 9km/h.

2 comments:

boo_licious said...

yum! Who demolishes all the other rugelachs? They sound too sinful to be left in the house.

fatboybakes said...

hi boolicious, actually, surprisingly between 4 adults, 3 fat(ish) kids and one skinny boy, we managed to polish off nearly 25.... leaving only 8 or so ...which were polished off the next day.