RUGELACH

Steps:

• Cream butter, cheese, and zest with a mixer on medium speed.
• Sift dry ingredients and add; blend just until incorporated (use a wooden spoon if hard to mix).
• Shape dough into a thick log and divide into three 8-oz. portions.
• Wrap each piece in plastic and flatten into a disk.
• Chill dough overnight before using.
• Preheat oven to 350°; line baking sheets with parchment paper.
• Prepare (but keep separate) walnuts, cinnamon-sugar (mix 3/4 cup sugar with the 1 TBS cinnamon), melted butter, egg-water wash (mix egg with the 1 tsp water), and sprinkling sugar.
• Lightly dust work surface with flour.
• Flatten a chilled dough disk lightly with rolling pin, then roll it into a 12" circle, 1/8" thick.
• Flip dough often to prevent sticking.
• Ragged edges are normal.
• If there are big gaps in the dough, just trim off a little dough from another area (any place it goes over 12") and patch it in inches.
• Lightly brush the dough with melted butter; sprinkle 1/4 cup cinnamon-sugar over the entire surface.
• Then sprinkle 1/3 cup chopped walnuts on the sugar.
• With the rolling pin, gently press the nuts into the dough all the way across the circle-this will help keep the nuts in place when you roll up the cookies.
• Use a pizza wheel to cut 16 wedges-first cut the circle in half, then in half again to make quarters. Now cut each quarter in half, then again to make 16.
• Starting at the wide end of a wedge, roll it to the center of the circle to make a crescent.
• Place on a prepared baking sheet, point down, spacing 1" apart.
• Gently brush cookies with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar.
• Bake 20-30 min., or until brown, rotating pan halfway through baking.
• Cool rugelach on racks.
• **Special Tip**:
• Rugelach rules are minimal-here is how to roll, assemble, and bake.
• Rolling: It's fine if you don't roll a perfect circle (I can't!). The dough will crack at the edges- that's okay! Once the round is roughly 12" across, patch gaps with dough trim from the sides.
• Assembling: Don't skimp on cinnamon-sugar and nuts when assembling rugelach. You'll think it's overloaded inside, but most of the cookie's flavor comes from the filling. Coarse sugar sprinkled on top makes festive-looking rugelach, but if you don't have it, just use a good amount of regular sugar.
• Baking: Of these three rules, baking is most critical. Rugelach must be baked long enough-they're thick in the middle and will take longer to bake than most other cookies. Your goal is a cookie with rich browning all the way around-but not too much!