Rugelach, a pastry for all seasons.....

Our recipe for this week at Tuesday's with Dorie was Rugelach, chosen by Piggys Cooking Journal. These were awesome!!! My DH said they were "very good, and could he have more?". DH is the taster for all the recipes I try, he's very good at critiquing each recipe and occasionally offering some good suggestions. These will defiantly be made again! Maybe for our Christmas brunch since they can be made weeks ahead of time.

I got a new kitchen toy this week, the Escali Pana volume and weight scale. This scale is made for a baker, it will weigh in grams and ounces like most scales but the great feature with this scale is that it can weigh the volume of ingredients. It will convert to cups and tablespoons for liquid and dry, very cool! I used it to measure the jam in this recipe; I needed a 1/3 cup of each of the jams I used, so I put a Pyrex custard cup on the scale, set the code for jam and just added the jam until the 1/3 cup was reached. No measuring cups to wash, I just heated the jam in the dish and was good to go. The scale comes with a sheet that has dozens of common items we use to bake and cook, each one has a code that you input (very easy to do). The codes are for the different densities of ingredients like powdered sugar, granulated sugar, packed brown sugar, grated carrots, cheese, different flours, syrup and many more. I think between the BeaterBlade and this scale I will be much faster in the kitchen, not that baking is a race, just means I can make more in the same amount of time, LOL.

The dough came together easily in the food processor and I refrigerated it for 2 days instead of 1 but didn't notice any adverse affects. After rolling out and brushing on the jam, the dough became a bit soft and made it a little difficult to roll up. I decided to roll the second piece of dough out on parchment paper, spread on the jam and nuts, put it on a baking sheet and then into the refrigerator for about 15 minutes. That worked perfectly, dough held together and rolled up much easier.

I made a few changes to the basic filling included with the recipe. I used the raspberry jam and pecans but changed the spice to one-half teaspoon of cardamon and an eighth teaspoon of cinnamon. I made another filling using apricot/pineapple preserves, turbinado sugar, macadamia nuts, ground ginger and coconut. I loved the coconut version but could have put more coconut in the filling. DH loves raspberry anything and liked the cardamon/raspberry combo the best! I only baked six of each kind and froze the rest for next weekend; can't wait for Saturday.