Sprout & Pea

Grow­ing up, my mom always made incred­i­ble rugelach for Hanukkah, but I’ve never attempted the tra­di­tional dessert myself. Our extended fam­ily invited us to a hol­i­day lunch this week­end and my par­ents just so hap­pened to be in town from Miami, so we were all able to be together for the first time in quite a while. Since this was a spe­cial occa­sion and my mom was here to taste test, I decided to attempt the deli­cious dessert that I grew up with — but with my own lit­tle twist. After all, mom’s approval is the one that counts.

I knew that I wanted to try to make a gluten free dough so I scoured the inter­net and finally found one on Bake This. Eat That. Then Move! that sounded great. It’s a super sim­ple dough that involves gluten free flour, but­ter, sugar, cream cheese and yogurt. For the fill­ing, I used some deli­cious Sarabeth’s straw­berry rhubarb pre­serves that I had recently pur­chased, some cin­na­mon and sugar, and some pine nuts. These guys were not only sim­ple to make, but they also got the mom, fam­ily and friend seal of approval! Here’s how I made them…

Dough Recipe From Bake This. Eat That. Then Move!
2 cups Gluten-​​free Flour
1 1/​2 tsp Xan­than Gum
1/​4 cup Sugar
1/​4 tsp Salt
1 cup Unsalted but­ter, COLD
1 — 8oz pack­age Neufcha­tel Cream Cheese, COLD
1/​3 cup plain non-​​fat yogurt (I used 0% Greek Yogurt)

Mix together the flour, xan­than gum, salt, and optional sweet­ener and put in food proces­sor (not a mixer!).
Cut cold but­ter and cold cream cheese into small pieces and add to flour along with the yogurt.
Pulse until the ingre­di­ents come together as a dough (it may be slightly crumbly).
Remove the dough from the proces­sor, and shape it with your hands into 4 equal por­tions, shap­ing each into a round disk.
Wrap each in plas­tic and refrig­er­ate for at least sev­eral hours, or up to 2 days.

Fill­ing:
Jam of your choice (as always, I rec­om­mend check­ing the ingre­di­ents to make sure it is made only with fresh fruit and nat­ural sweet­ener — with no addi­tives)
Crushed Pine Nuts (or nuts of your choice — you can also add dried fruit)
Mix­ture of Sugar and Cinnamon

Once the dough was ready, I rolled it out until very thin, (not too thin to tear eas­ily), spread on the jam and sprin­kled with the sugar, cin­na­mon and crushed pine nuts. I then sliced each dough into long tri­an­gles (about 1.5 inches at top of tri­an­gle) and rolled up the tri­an­gles start­ing from the large side. Place each rugelach on parch­ment paper (to keep from stick­ing) on a bak­ing sheet and bake for 15 min­utes at 350 degrees.