Friday, December 21, 2007

Happy Healthy (kinda) Holidays!

"Tilley", coloured pencil on Mi-Teintes
Copyright Rita Woodburne
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So this is the last cookie posting and also my last post until after the Christmas holiday. In fact, I probably won't do another post until next Friday when, as was hinted at in my previous post, I hope to have somewhat of a solid plan outlined for next year's adventures in art.

But you're here for cookies, aren't you? ... That's what I thought.

This final cookie recipe is great because it incorporates fruit so you can eat them and justifibly tell people that you're being good because you're getting your daily serving of fruit. In fact, the more of them you eat, the more servings of fruit you get, and nothing helps fruit go down easier than with a good dose of chocolate to go with it, right?


Strawberry Chocolate Rugelach

Dough
1 cup butter (no substitutes), softened
1 240 g pkg of cream cheese, softened
2 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (optional)
1/4 tsp salt
3 cups all purpose flour

Filling
3/4 cup strawberry jam (sugar free...trust me on this one)
1 cup chocolate chips or coarsely chopped chocolate
2 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon

1 egg whisked with 2 tbsp water for brushing
sugar for sprinkling

Beat butter and cream cheese until fluffy. Add sugar, nutmeg (optional) and salt and blend. Stir in flour to combine. Shape dough into 4 discs and wrap with plastic wrap. Chill for at least 1 hour or unti dough is firm.

Mix together jam, chocolate, sugar and cinnamon in bowl and set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. On a lightly floured surface roll out one disc in a circle about 8 inches in diameter (if you can roll it out into a square shape so much the better, less waste). Trim outside edges of dough (if in round shape) and cut dough into 12 triangle wedges. Place a teaspoonful of filling at wide end of each triangle. Roll up each cookie into a croissant shape and bend gently to bring ends together.
Repeat with remaining discs and arrange 1 inch apart on prepared baking tray. Brush cookies with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for about 20 min., until light brown. Let cool, then devour.


You can also dust them with icing sugar after baking if you want that extra kick of sugar or want to make them look purty. Also, the filling for these cookies can easily be changed depending on your own tastes. Raspberry jam also tastes excellent or you can even use chopped prunes or apricots, although if using dried fruit up the amount to 1 cup instead of 3/4.

So that's it until next week after Christmas. I hope everyone has a fanastic holiday full of good times and that Santa is good to all of you. Happy Holidays!!

2 comments:

Jennifer Rose said...

Gorgeous portrait! Very soft looking fur and nice wet shiny nose :)

Rugelach? I can't even think how that is pronounced. Sound good though :)

Rita said...

Thanks for the compliments on the art, Jennifer!
The cookies, as difficult as they can be to pronounce, are quite tasty. They taste great with a glass of bisschopswijn. :p