Holiday Special: Cheat Rugelach!

It's the holiday season! Filled with lights, bone-chilling frost, warm clothes and good food.

And with any holiday season, most of us will spend time with time with friends and family, and will have to work together to keep the festivities rolling.

No matter what you celebrate, you will need to navigate different traditions and expectations that each person brings to the table (or fireplace/menora/tree). 

For myself, I come from a Jewish, New York City background and my wife's family from Missouri has Scottish and Welsh roots. When visiting my in-laws I wanted to make something that would bridge both our cultures and be familiar to all of us, despite our different religions, backgrounds, and tastes.

I came up with the idea of baking homemade nutella rugelach, using crescent roll dough.

Rugelach (the 'ch' is pronounced like in German) is a traditional Eastern-european Jewish desert. It is the cousin of the croissant and originally comes from the pastries of Vienna, Austria. The dough is rolled around a filling, whether chocolate, cinnamon-sugar, or poppyseed, and shaped into a crescent before baking. Here's a picture of chocolate rugelach from Wipikedia: 

Instead of the usual dough, which is made with sour cream for leavening, I opted for something ubiquitous in most households in the American Midwest: pre-made crescent roll dough. Brands like Pillsbury or Signature Kitchens sell tubes of sliced and ready-to-roll dough that you can pop open and bake. Many people around the country eat these crescent rolls alongside eggs for breakfast.

Let me say one more thing about using the pre-packaged dough. Some people might think that not making your own dough and instead employing store-bought ingredients cheapens the result. I disagree. We live in a culture of endless supply chains and ready made foods. Why not use what you can find easily and then tinker with it? Now back to the rugelach...

For the filling, I used Nutella, that rich chocolate-hazelnut spread, along with a bit cinnamon and sugar. Chocolate for Christmas, chocolate for Hanukkah, and hazelnut goes with many other wintry flavors.

They came out a bit bigger than expected, which was a plus, and they were an instant hit. Here is the finished product:

I've placed the whole recipe below, in case you want to try it yourself. What ways have you tried to bridge family traditions? 

Nutella Rugelach with Crescent Roll Dough

Serves: 8 per batch

Ingredients:

• 1 tube of Pillsbury Crescent roll dough or any other brand of pre-sliced crescent roll dough
• Nutella
• Raw, granulated sugar
• Cinnamon
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 baking sheet

Instructions:

1. Open the tube of dough and spread the dough onto a baking sheet.
2. Separate the pieces of dough into triangles. There should already be scoring on the dough to pull apart easily.
3. Spread the nutella on each triangle and then sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar on top.
4. Roll the shortest side of the triangle towards the furthest-away edge, making a tight curl and shaping like a crescent.
5. Refrigerate the rugelach, still on the baking sheet, for 30 minutes. You don't want the filling to be runny while baking.
6. Take the rugelach out of the refrigerator and brush each piece with the beaten egg.
7. Preheat the oven to 350⁰F (177⁰C).
8. Bake for 15 minutes.
9. Let them rest for 5 minutes before serving.
10. Enjoy!