The holidays sharpen an appetite for nostalgia. How to get from Christianity's splashiest holiday to the very zenith of Jewish pastry? Oh, simple: Holiday = Nostalgia = Manhattan = Rugelach. My childhood Manhattan Christmases were spent with my Jewish friends helping decorate our tree, and me marveling at their glorious patisserie.
These, filled with bittersweet chocolate and scented with lemon, are a departure from the classic pastry- filled to bursting with lekvar (a luscious spread of dried apricot or prune) and chopped dried fruits and nuts. Of course, we're keeping the classic cream cheese- heavy dough, but filling it with chopped chocolate, lemon zest, and a sprinkling of coarse sugar, rather than the classic (fabulous) fruit filling. The resulting pastry hits all the right notes- rich, tender, flaky dough, a gentle bitter edge of sophistication, a perfumy, almost floral lemon fragrance for it to play off of, and a crispy golden puff of sugar encasing the whole thing. All the elements are in ideal balance, no one bite quite like any other.
Another advantage of the chocolate version over the classic? I've made both, and this is a much more manageable project- preparing the lekvar, fruit, nuts, and coating take a lot of time and a lot of bowls (and a lot of expense). Having said this, they hardly seem like the work of a slacker. These are complex, intricate, baroque little pastries, second in no way to their classic cousin.
The dough:
400 g/ 14 oz cream cheese
400 g/ 14 oz butter
400 g / 3 1/3 C flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
60 g/ generous 1/2 C sugar
Bring the butter and cream cheese to room temperature, and beat until light and fluffy with the sugar and the salt. Blend the flour in gently, or even stir it in with a wooden spoon. Form the dough into two flat rectangular pieces, wrap in plastic, and chill until firm (or even freeze- a half hour should do it).
While the dough firms up, we can prepare the filling:
200 g/ 7 oz. dark chocolate
zest of one lemon
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| This amount of zest gives a nicely pronounced aroma. |
Also make a wash by whisking together:
one egg
a splash of milk
And put some sugar in a bowl. Coarse sugar, especially coarse natural sugar, is extra pretty and extra tasty.
Line a baking sheet with non-stick parchment, and turn on the oven to 180 C/375 f. Unwrap one rectangle onto a well-floured counter top and dust the top of the dough with flour too. Roll into a rectangle about 40 x 25 cm/16" x 10", and score down the middle lengthwise, making two long, narrow rectangles. I had very, very uneven raggedy edges- doesn't matter a bit. As we'll roll them, we just start from the ragged edge, and end with the clean edge on the outside of the roll. Scatter half the chopped chocolate and half the lemon zest over the dough, and sprinkle with a a few good pinches of the coarse sugar. Leave a couple of centimeters (an inch) at the bottom (the perfect, straight end), uncovered, and brush this area with the egg wash to seal the roll:
Start rolling from the ragged edge- not too very tightly- and firmly press the edge with the egg wash to the outside of the roll (brush any excess flour off this area to help it stick) to seal it well.
The roll can now be cut in half, and, if your roll is about the length mine was, each half can be cut into three even pieces. These will spread- tremendously- and we won't want them narrow to start with- 2 1/2 - 3 cm, (an inch or more) is certainly not too thick.
Dip these pieces into the egg wash, and coat them generously with the coarse sugar. Remember, there is very little sugar in the dough, so there is no need for restraint. the shattering crisp exterior makes a nice counterpoint to the tender dough of the pastry.
Put them on a baking sheet with plenty of room for spreading in between- twelve on a sheet seems to work fine:
Start them at 20 minutes, but they may need as much as 30- let them get golden, and there should be no whitish parts. Remember that the dough is really just butter and cream cheese barely held together with flour, and we don't want any gooey dough in the centers. Just make sure the sugary bottoms do not burn- I moved the baking sheet to the top rack during the last few minutes of baking. Also, these make a tremendous mess:
The lacy sugar-butter-egg stuff on the baking sheet is delicious- break it off and eat it, to make a good presentation and also because it smells irresistible.
These taste like ice skating at Rockefeller Center.
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