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Rugelach again

Enough career pondering... now back to baking.

My third batch since Christmas, this time with strawberry jam and walnuts. These are pre-baking -- I had the dough sitting around for a while and didn't want to keep it in the fridge too much longer, so I decided to prepare and quick-freeze them instead of baking them. I am getting better, but I still haven't quite mastered them. A few things I've learned:

• Prepare the dough at least a day in advance -- each step is easy on its own, but put them together and these become a much bigger project.
  
• The dough can stay in the fridge for well over a week with no loss of quality.
  
• But leave it out at room temperature for forty-five minutes or so before rolling out. (This batch turned out much too thick because I didn't have time to leave it out for long enough.)
  
• Jam and nuts make a perfectly fine filling -- no need for anything more elaborate.
  
• If you slice them thin and cook them on their sides (flipping once), they become more like these pinwheels. The look and the texture are slightly different, so it's sort of like getting two cookies for the price of one.
  
• Using floss to cut them doesn't squash them down as much as using a knife.

My repertoire of impressive cookies (defined as cookies that make people say, "Wow, you MADE that?") now includes rugelach, biscotti (only impressive if you've never attempted it before, actually quite easy), black and whites (NY style please, none of these New England "half moon" things), and the piece de resistance, the rainbow cookie. Before Christmas I plan to attempt macarons and florentines. I'm open to suggestions!

Full post as published by Magic Cookie on March 16, 2010 (boomark / email).