Aylenish Rugelach With Orange, Walnuts and Cinnamon

- Total Time
- 1 hour 30 minutes
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- ¼cup plus 2 tablespoons/55 grams golden raisins
- ¼cup/60 milliliters rum (optional)
- 2tablespoons/25 grams granulated sugar, plus more for sprinkling
- 2tablespoons/30 grams dark brown sugar
- ¼teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ⅛teaspoon ground nutmeg, preferably fresh
- ½cup/60 grams chopped toasted walnuts
- Salt
- 1cup/340 grams orange marmalade
- About 1 pound/500 grams puff pastry
- 1egg yolk, whisked with a splash of milk or water
Preparation
- Step 1
Soak raisins in rum and ½ cup very hot water. In a medium bowl, combine both sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg, walnuts and a pinch of salt. Drain raisins (discard soaking liquid) and mix them into sugar mixture. In a saucepan, melt marmalade until runny. Remove any large chunks orange peel.
- Step 2
Cut about a 4-ounce piece of puff pastry and roll out on a floured board into a rectangle, about 17 inches by 7½ inches. The pastry should be thin and supple enough to drape, but not so thin that holes start to appear when rolling.
- Step 3
Brush a 2½-inch-wide stripe of marmalade down the long center of the rectangle. Sprinkle marmalade with filling and fold top edge down over filling. Brush the top of filled section with marmalade and sprinkle marmalade with filling. Fold bottom edge up over the filling to make a kind of flattened roll; do not press. Cut in half crosswise and refrigerate rolls for 20 to 30 minutes, or freeze for 10 to 15 minutes.
- Step 4
Heat oven to 375 degrees; use the convection setting if you have it. Cut rolls across into ½-inch-wide slices. Place slices, seam side down, on baking sheet lined with parchment paper or nonstick liners. Brush tops with egg yolk and sprinkle with sugar.
- Step 5
Bake 20 to 25 minutes, until golden brown and puffed. Let cool slightly before removing to a cooling rack. Meanwhile, repeat with remaining pastry and filling. Store at room temperature in layers separated by parchment paper, in airtight containers.
Private Notes
Comments
It really doesn't take all day to make the basic rugelach dough. Find the basic recipe on the NYT cooking web site. Make it in the evening in your food processer or with an electric mixer; divide into 4 balls, wrap in plastic and put it in the frig over night. In the morning you are ready to go. The filling in this recipe is delicious and different.
Walnuts add body, but it works fine without walnuts. Parchment or wax paper is a must
Used dried currants soaked in brandy instead of raisins. Wonderful.
Used soaked dates instead of marmalade & pecans. Used coarse sugar on top
This recipe sounds delicious, but I wonder the real yield. Using 1/4 of puff pastry per batch, at 17" wide, and cut into 1/2" pieces, that's ~30 pieces per batch, X 4 batches = 10 dozen, not 4 dozen. Either the pieces you cut are wider than 1/2", the original puff pastry length should be less than 17" wide, or some other reason. I cook a lot and help a cookbook author with recipe write-up, so I get frustrated with sloppy recipes, which don't help amateur cooks.
I think the recipe intends you to roll it longways, up the 17” length, and cut it into 1/2 inch pieces across the 7 1/2 inch width. This would result in 15 pieces per 1/4 of puff pastry, so 60 pieces total. The yield would be about 5 dozen, rather than the recipe’s stated 4 dozen, or your calculated 10 dozen. Hope this helps!
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