Rugelach - A Puff Pastry Cookie Recipe

I know I promised some recipes using puff pastry, but the holidays were such a whirlwind that I didn't take nearly enough pictures.  Browsing through my pictures, it was hard to find a complete start to finish picture trail for any one recipe.  Mental note - hand the camera over to an assistant.  The boys are always looking to make a little money and SB hires himself out cheap.  I did find one complete set of pictures for Rugelach, but I must have gotten flour on the lens at some point, because the pics aren't that great.  Still here they are.

Start with the puff pastry I showed you how to make here.  You'll only need about 1/5 of the dough.  I actually used the scraps from after having made a berry strudel, and some puff pastry wrapped cocktail weiners.  Shape the dough into a disk and chill in the frig for an hour if you didn't just pull the dough out of the frig.  Place the disk on a liberally floured surface and sprinkle with more flour.  I used sweet rice flour.

Roll the dough out to a circle an 1/8" thick.  Keep turning your dough an 1/8 of a turn with each stroke.  This will help to keep your dough even and help it to keep from sticking.

Spread out 1/4 cup of apricot preserves over the top of the dough and sprinkle on 1 1/2 tbsps cinnamon sugar and 1/2 cup chopped dried fruit and nuts.  I used dates, golden raisins, and walnuts.  It'll be easier to roll up the rugelach if you keep the fruit and nuts toward the outside of the dough circle.

Use a pizza cutter to slice towards the center and create wedges.  I made 24.  I realize this pic shows only 12, but I cut each of those wedges in half.  Roll up the wedges starting from the outside of the circle.

Place the rolled up rugelach onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, brush with egg wash, and bake at 400 for 20 minutes or until they are golden and crispy.  These were sweet and both flaky(the pastry) and chewy(the fruit.)

Thanks for popping in and baking with me.  I'm linking this up at Funky Junk Interiors' Saturday Night Special and Remodelaholic's Recipe Swap Sundays.  I'm also entering this in the Culinary Smackdown Cookie contest being held at uTry It.

House Goals 2011

So, I've already shared my personal resolutions for this year here.  I've got some goals for the house, too.  Although I suppose these are goals for me too, since the closets aren't going to organize themselves.

1.  Create an organization system that really works for the front hall closet.  I've organized the coat & shoe closet several times, but none of those systems have taken hold.  Currently, we can't put away coats without stepping on shoes. 

I dream of something like this.

But since my reality doesn't exactly match up to Christina's(except possibly the half naked child playing with my shoes,) I'd be happy with this.  Just simple order.

2.  Rebuilding my stairs.  Currently the stairs that lead to our basement are a scary deathtrap.  We were completely oblivious to that until this past year, when I ripped the carpet up off of them.  This change allowed us to see how much the stairs move and bounce when you traverse them.  Scary stuff.  Checking underneath them, there are no stringers.  The stairs are nailed into tiny cleats, not stringers.

I'm not sure if I'm going to go with painted risers like these.

Or something fun like these wallpapered ones.

3. Build more bookshelves.  We're a family who loves to read.  Each of the boys have bookshelves in their rooms, and we have shelves in the family room, but I'd like to build some in the living room also.  Some of the best light is in the living room and it'd be nice to keep my fave books there.

4.  Finally put some $ into the landscaping.  We love our backyard.  We have a deep wooded yard, the deer come right up to the house, turkeys come down off the hill, and it's not unusual to see a rabbit or a groundhog.  Unfortunately all that wildlife means that our grass is patchy, and our flowers and veggies get eaten and trampled on.  We'd like to plant some new grass, put in some hardscaping, maybe a pond, and finally plant a garden that will look pretty year round.

5.  Overhaul my laundry room.  This one is way down on the list, because it might be a 2012 project.  I showed you all my pretty laundry room doors that I created here.  It'd be nice to walk into an equally pretty room.  This is a much larger both CG and myself type project, so it may not get done this year.  DIY remodel projects can be hard on a couple and I'm not sure if we're ready to handle another big project just yet.  We've been discussing how hard DIY remodels are on a marriage over on the Gardenweb Kitchen Forum in this post here.   Sidebar: if my MIL is reading this please, for the love of all that is holy, don't click on that gardenweb link.

Thanks for popping in and listening to my house goals for the year.  I'm linking this up to the Nester's Home Goals Party.

What's for Dinner?

I normally post a ton of pics when I post a recipe, but this one only has a finished pic, because I hadn't really planned on sharing it.  Why not?  Because this was a cleaning out the frig meal.  It was so well received, though, that I thought I'd share it anyway.  So here's my cleaning out the frig Ham & Pea Soup with Kale, Potatoes, and Beans.

I started with dry great northern beans and soaked them in the morning.  You can soak dry beans over night(6-8hrs), start them in the morning before heading out for your day, or alternatively boil them for an hour and let them sit for another hour.  You also could use canned, but rinse them thoroughly, because they're pretty salty.  I like using dry beans, because it's an awful lot of protein bang for your buck.

I started the soup by throwing the hambone left from dinner with the in-laws into a stock pot of water and fired up the stove.  I used enough water to cover the hambone.  While the water was heating up I peeled and chopped up 1 large onion and 6 or 7 medium potatoes and added them to the pot.  I then added the presoaked beans to the pot and allowed the soup to simmer away.  I added a good several shakes of ground white pepper and garlic powder to the soup.

When the potatoes were cooked through, I ladled out 3 scoops of potatoes & beans to my blender and pureed them, enough to make the soup creamy, but still leaving plenty whole in the soup.  If I had an immersion blender I'd have just done this step in the pot.  I added the pureed potatoes & beans back to the stock pot.  I added 2 cups of frozen peas to the stock pot and pulled out the ham bone and shredded the meat off of it.  I added the shredded ham back to the stock pot and added about 3 cups of kale(it seems like a lot before it all wilts down.)  I let that simmer for another minute or 2 and the soup was done.

WD sucked his bowl down in about 2 minutes flat and declared that it was creamy and delicious.  SB had 2 helpings and requested leftovers be packed in a thermos for lunch the next day.  It turns out that while the boys aren't huge fans of sauteed kale, they like it in soup.  Yay!

Thanks for popping in and cleaning out the frig with me.  I'm linking this up to Gluten-Free Homemaker's Gluten-Free Wednesday, Real Sustenance's Seasonal Sunday,  and Celiac Teen is hosting Go Ahead Honey, it's Gluten-Free.



Gingerbread Trifle

Now that the last of the holiday entertaining is over, I've started packing away Christmas. :(  It always makes me a little sad to put away all of the sparkle and shine.  I've toyed with the idea of leaving up the decorations until The Epiphany, but it seems a bit false since we don't actually celebrate it here.  Still for those of you who do, here's one more holiday recipe.  The Gingerbread Trifle I made was a big hit with the in-laws, so I'll share the how-to.  Unfortunately, it was such a big hit that I forgot to take pictures before it was half gone.

First I started with making Gingerbread Cake.  I creamed a stick of butter with 1/4 cup molasses and 1 cup light brown sugar.  I mixed in 3 eggs, one at a time, 1/2 cup applesauce, and 2 tbsps milk.

In a separate bowl I whisked together 1/2 cup sorghum flour, 1/2 cup soy flour, 1/2 cup arrowroot starch, 1/2 cup tapioca starch, 1/2 cup almond flour, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg, 1/4 tsp ground cloves, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp xanthan gum, and 1 tsp baking soda.

 I added the dry ingredients to the mixer bowl and beat until a batter formed, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.

I divided the batter between 2 - 9" cake pans that had been buttered and lined with parchment paper and baked the cakes for 25 minutes at 350.

Trifles are just cake chunks layered with custard and whipped cream.  I've been known to make my own custard, like I did here for this bananas foster cream pie.  But not every dessert is going to see complete from scratch commitment from me.   I was in a time crunch so instead of standing over a stove whisking, I opened up some pudding packs.  Really.  Don't judge.

I keep these in the pantry for the kids lunches.  They are made with corn starch so are gf friendly.  I used 8 snack cups.  At 4 oz each, that translates to 4 cups vanilla pudding.  To this I added 1 1/2 cups pureed pumpkin, 3 tbsps cinnamon sugar, and 1/2 tsp allspice and mixed thoroughly.

I broke up the cake into chunks and layered the cake chunks, followed by a layer of pudding, followed by some dollops of whipped cream, and continued in this manner until the trifle dish was full.  It took 3 layers of cake, pudding, whipped cream to reach the top of the trifle dish.  I used up 1 1/2 of the gingerbread cakes to make the trifle.

Thanks for popping in and checking out my gingerbread trifle.  I'm sharing this at Midnight Maniac's Meatless Monday, and Dr. Laura's Tasty Tuesday Adventures, Gluten-Free Homemaker's Gluten-Free Wednesday, and Fudge Ripple's Tuesday Night Supper Club.

New Year's Resolutions

1.  This year I resolve to do less and be more.  No, it's not the death knell for my blog.  Don't worry, I have tons of projects that I plan to work on and share with all of you.  What I mean is I'm not going to feel obligated to say yes to every single request for help.  I'm not going to stop volunteering, but I'm going to be a bit choosier so that I can give each volunteering opportunity a better me.  Do Less, Be More.  I like it.

2.  I resolve to cancel my gym membership.  What?!  Nobody quits the gym at the start of the year.  Nobody, but me.  SB received an XBox and Kinect from Santa this year.  I vow to play with my kids more.  If I cancel my gym membership, I'll have to play with the kids more just to get the cardio in.  I vow to run and jump around the family room with the kids, to say yes when WD asks if I want to toss the football around, to remember that I have them on loan for just a short time before I send them out into the universe and whatever else I'm working on can be set down for a bit.

3.  I resolve to get organized and purge.  People who know me personally are confused on this one.  Yes, I love baskets and bins.  Yes, I'm quick with the p-touch labeler.  But, my craft room is a disaster, the foyer closet is down right scary, my multiple closets are full to bursting, and it's all because I have too much stuff.  Nobody needs 85 pairs of shoes.  Not even me.  I vow to be brutally honest about what needs to stay in paring down everything in my home.  This one's going to be baby steps.  I'll start with boxing up 10% and see how it goes from there.

4.  I resolve to stop flipping out and yelling at CG when he steps into the kitchen on party day.  This one's going to be a tough one for me.  I prepare for parties with carefully written lists.  The day of any party has me dancing a carefully orchestrated number of steps to ensure that every dish is plated and ready to go at just the right temperature when the guests arrive.  CG inevitably steps into the kitchen, because he's hungry, one of the kids is hungry, or he just wants to give me a hug and what do I do?  I flip out.  My head spins around like in some horror movie.  Someone ought to throw some holy water on me.  I vow to remember that nobody will care if only half of the hors d'oeuvres are plated when they arrive, but they will notice if CG is skulking around like a cat who just got its tail stepped on.

Are you planning any resolutions for this new year?  What changes are you hoping to make?  I'd love to hear what you all are planning for 2011.