Rugelach for Hanukkah

Hanukkah is just around the corner and I will be making a treat this weekend that has become a family tradition for us.  Rugelach is a popular Jewish pastry, in Europe, in the U.S. and in Israel.  Its origins are intertwined with Jewish history. Cooking with sour cream is an ancient Middle Eastern staple that Jews took with them in their migrations through Europe.  Jews in Central and Eastern Europe, the Ashkenazi, created this rolled pastry that uses sour cream in the dough and is traditionally filled with nuts and fruit spreads.  In the late 17th century, some groups of Jews returned to Jerusalem and Safed and a few other Jewish communities in Israel, bringing the Rugelach along with them.  Jews escaping from persecutions across the Balkan peninsula and Italy celebrated the fact that the Crusades had largely ended, now permitting some of them to return to Jerusalem.  The Rugelach was a food of celebration of their survival.  Later, it also came to be used to celebrate Hanukkah, another holiday of Jewish survival.  Despite the fact that it is not cooked in oil as are all the other traditional hanukkahfoods, Rugelach is considered a traditional treat to serve during Hanukkah.

Jews in the United States are said to have introduced cream cheese into the recipe.  This addition is now found in Israeli recipes, too! In addition to the fillings I have used, apricots and almonds, native to Israel, are also often used as fillings. 

According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, "On Fridays, you can smell the distinct aroma of rugelach on every street corner in Israel.  People anxious to buy them for the weekend will line up at their neighborhood bakery to get them hot out of the oven.  Unfortunately, due to their small size, there never seems to be enough of these delicious pastries to go around."

The name is Yiddish, from the root, "roog", meaning "corner".  Rugelach literally means "little corners"and is a descriptive of how it is rolled up into the little triangle corner.  In israel in modern Hebrew it is often called roglit (ro'gleet) a descriptive of a trailing vine (perhaps referring to the twist or roll) and its kinship in sounding like the Yiddish, Rugelach.
Now, the recipe:

RUGELACH   makes approximately 48 pastries

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
1/3 cup sour cream
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
1/2 cup raisins *** OR...a family favorite..use mini chocolate chips (dark or white) or combine ALL 3 of these last ingredients..raisins, white and dark chocolate or any combination thereof)

3/4 cup brown sugar mixed with 1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon --put to side to roll the pastry in just before baking

Directions:

Cut cold butter and cream cheese into small bits. In a food processor or using a mixer ( I don'thave a processor) , pulse/mix the flour, salt, butter, cream cheese and sour cream until crumbly.  Don't overwork it and get it gooey!
Shape the crumbly mixture into four equal disks.  Put each disk into a ziplock in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours or up to 2 days.The batter is so much easier to work with when cold and almost impossible to get right at room temp.
You will work with one disk at a time.
Combine sugar, cinnamon, chopped walnuts, and finely chopped raisins and or chopped up miniature chocolate chips. ( white or dark or both)
Using wax paper; Roll each disk into a 9-inch round, keeping the other disks chilled**  until ready to roll them. Sprinkle the round with sugar/nut mixture.  Press lightly into dough.  With a pizza cutter, cut each round into 12 wedges.  Roll wedges from wide to narrow, you will end up with a point on the outside of the pastry. 
Take the mixture of cinnamon and sugar and put the mixture on another sheet of wax paper and lightly roll each pastry in the mix then
Place on an ungreased baking sheet, point edge down and then when all the pastries are filled and rolled and on the baking sheet, place them into the refrigerator for 20 minutes before baking.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C)
After rugelach have chilled for the 20 minutes, bake them in the center rack of your oven approximately 22 minutes (ovens DO vary) until lightly golden.  Cool on wire racks.  Store in airtight containers, they freeze very well.

A variation : Instead of chopped walnuts, used chopped almonds.  Before putting the filling mix onto the dough, use a pastry brush to layer apricot jam, or some brown sugar.  Then add the recommended filling.  Or you can omit rolling the pastries in the sugar and cinnamon mixture. 

This is a recipe that you can make all your own by playing with your family's favorite ingredients
Enjoy.

Happy Hanukkah!

** edit 4/5/2013. I was only informed today I'd said chillded instead of chilled and had misspelled favorite. I'm sure I have many goofy typos on my blog.