TWD: Rugelach from Baking with Julia

Rugelach in crescent shapes.

A friend recently posted on Facebook that she’d just made eight dozen rugelach. Eight dozen. That’s 96 little cream cheese and butter pastries with a sweet cinnamony filling. My husband, who really, really loves rugelach, caught the news first and told me.

Our friend is Jewish and very pregnant, so the eight dozen pastries are important for her nesting instinct, for her late-term cravings and for providing nourishment to family and guests when the baby comes home.

“Eight dozen,” he said, not really trying to hide his rugelach envy.

He brightened when I said his rugelach dreams would come true in just about two weeks as the Tuesdays with Dorie group baked a recipe from Baking with Julia.

But since that conversation, he has asked me more than once: “Now, when are you making rugelach?” as if to make sure I hadn’t changed my mind. To keep him in the loop, we discussed the recipe and what filling I would use. I prefer chocolate filling, but he insisted on cinnamon, so I followed the recipe and its cinnamon theme.

Rugelach from the book Baking with Julia.