The Recipe Club Hits the Road
In preparation for our upcoming West coast book tour, we headed to upstate New York for weekend of Autumn leafing and bookstore readings and signings.
First stop: The Village Bookstore, in Pleasantville, New York. Though it was miserably gray and rainy outside, inside the store could not have been warmer and cozier. Roy and Yvonne Solomon greeted us with the most delicious homemade rugelach, made with peach jam. Yvonne told us she rescues the bruised fruit at the end of the day from the local farmer’s market, and cans as much of the stuff as she can to last her through a gloomy winter.
We were so happy to eat these tender, sweet morsels, and even happier to share Yvonne’s recipe with you! (The reading was great also, but hey, we have our priorities.)
Rugelach
From Yvonne Solomon, Owner of The Village Bookstore, 10 Washington Ave., Pleasantville, NY
When “just a cookie†doesn’t cut it, try these traditional Eastern European favorites. This version might not be completely “traditional Eastern European:†– it comes from our Japanese neighbor, Ritsu. (A little extra eastern.) Makes about 4 dozen Rugelach.
Ingredients
Dough
- 1 cup sweet butter
- 4 oz. cream cheese
- 4 oz. cottage cheese
- 2 cups flour
- 1 egg, beaten
Filling
- Jam or Honey
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 cup walnuts (chopped)
- Raisins, optional
- Preheat the oven to 350.
- Mix and knead butter, cream cheese, cottage cheese, and flour, or process in a food processor.
- Divide the dough into six balls, wrap in wax paper or plastic wrap, and refrigerate. (I usually leave it for an hour or so, but I sometimes work it right away.)
- Roll each ball into a 10†(or so) circle. Divide the circle into 8 triangles, like cutting a pie.
- Pulse sugar, cinnamon, walnuts, and optional raisins in a food processor until lightly blended.
- Coat the dough with the jam or honey (try the Peach Jam recipe, below), top with some of the sugar and nut mixture (reserving some for later), and roll each laden triangle, starting at the wide end and rolling toward the tip, to form a crescent.
- Brush each crescent with beaten egg and then roll each piece in some more of the reserved nut mixture.
- (Alternate construction: roll each ball of dough into a rectangle, coat and fill as above, and roll the rectangle like a jelly roll. Then slice each jelly roll log into pieces about 1 to 1-1/2†thick. Brush with egg and more nut mixture as above.)
- Place the cut pieces on a jelly roll pan greased with butter or lined with parchment paper, and bake in a 350-degree oven for about 20 minutes, until the pieces are golden brown.
- Promptly remove them and cool on a wire rack.
Peach Butter
Although jam recipes typically call for a 1:1 ratio of fruit to sugar, I make peach butter 4 parts peach to 1 part sugar.
Peel the peaches (a quick dip in boiling water makes this easy), cut them up into a heavy enamel pot, add the sugar, bring the mix to a simmer and stir constantly until it thickens.
Can it in the usual way.
With this ratio of fruit to sugar, the result may brown a little more quickly than a more sugary blend, but it has a fabulous peach flavor!
Next stop: The Merritt Bookstore in Millbrook, NY. This is another charming indie bookstore, managed by the warm and lovely Eileen Charbonneau. Eileen welcomed us by baking Better-Late-Than-Never Zucchini Quickbread from the book! It’s a great recipe that she made perfectly. And once again, our reading was intimate and fun!
Well, we write together...so why not sign together?