Rugelach with Cream Cheese Filling

Since my husband doesn't care for apricots or raisins, I decided to take a poke around the internet and see what other sorts of rugelach recipes were out there. And I found this very yummy sounding recipe!

Ingredients

• 1 cup margarine
• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 
  
• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup instant hot chocolate mix
• 1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Beat the margarine and 1 package of cream cheese with an electric mixer in a large bowl until smooth. Mix in the flour, 1/2 cup of sugar, and vanilla. Cover dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Mix 1 package of cream cheese with the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar, cinnamon, hot chocolate mix, and chocolate chips. Set aside.
2. Preheat an oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly grease a baking sheet.
3. Divide dough into four equal portions. Roll each portion of dough into a 10 to 12-inch circle on a lightly floured surface. Spread a thin layer of the chocolate filling on each circle. Cut each circle into 8 wedges. Roll each wedge, starting with the wide end. Place the cookie point-side down on the prepared baking sheet.
4. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.

The dough was fairly familiar to me -- it's very similar to the dough I use for tart cookies, so I was unsurprised when I had to just get in there with my hands and mush it all together to get it properly mixed.
The filling, I found, mixed much better with a fork than with a mixing spoon. That way I could just sort of mash the cream cheese into the dry ingredients. I didn't spread it quite as far to the edges as I should have on this first piece, but I did better on the remaining three.



Cookies ready to go in the oven. They had a very long bake time, and I was determined to get them all in in one batch as a result, which meant moving one oven rack up a notch so both trays would fit at once.



Rugelach! The end result was quite tasty. I was worried they would come out very similar to my chocolate chip tart cookies, but the filling had a very different flavor. A lot less sweet, and the cinnamon was very prevalent.

The only problem I had was that nine of my cookies burned on the bottom.



All 9 burned cookies were at the edges of the sheet on the bottom rack. The ones in the center came out fine, as did the ones on the upper rack. So, note to self -- even if the bake time is 30 minutes, do two batches on a centered rack. Doing it right is better than doing it fast.

Posted by - Veronica