Quarantine Baking: Rugelach

Umm, so I've had this cream cheese in my refrigerator intended for baking during Hanukkah and Christmas.  I finally got to using one brick this morning for Rugelach, which will be my Passover gifts for my Jewish neighbors.  I see in my near baking future too, a Basque cheesecake.  It all started with that Ziploc bag of cinnamon sugar that I had not used all of for cinnamon toast.  And also the golden raisins in my refrigerator leftover from cream scones I baked for a faculty potluck in the fall. The husband is the baker, not me, and so we always have walnuts in the freezer.   Anyway, I used Ina Garten's recipe and took out a brick of cream cheese and a stick of butter to get to room temperature.  Oops, the recipe calls for a half pound of butter, not a half cup.  I took out another stick of butter and nuked it and added it to my dough.  

I remember that this dough is very soft and delicate and knew to scatter lots of flour on the counter and the dough board for rolling out the disks.

Oops I forgot to spread the apricot preserves on the disk before cutting the wedges.

I sprinkled my raisin and nuts and cinnamon and brown and white sugar mixture on to the dough.

Oops again.  I was supposed to have chilled the rolled cookies before baking and didn't realize that when I had already popped them in the oven.  I figured it would be okay as I had stuck the ball of dough in the freezer before rolling, and I constructed quickly. I had reserved an egg white from my quiche baking yesterday and used it for my cream and egg wash to get them golden. They looked okay to me in the oven.  Imperfectly perfect.  Wabi sabi.

I worried that they would burn and kept checking them after the first fifteen minutes and putting them back in the oven three more times for two or three more minutes because they weren't brown enough for my liking.  Finally the rugelach were golden enough.  I just nibbled one, and it was SCRUMMY.  I love a dessert that has a bit of crispiness as well as a delicate crumb and is not overly sweet from dried and preserved fruit.