TWD: Rugelach

Cream cheese dough, cinnamon sugar, plump dried fruits, toasted nuts...this recipe sounded decadent, old-fashioned, and delicious! I have used this dough in other recipes and it bakes up flaky, light, and beautifully flavorful. While it is certainly the best part of the cookie, the dough seems to suffer in this somewhat clunky recipe.
I decided to follow this recipe to the letter, making homemade apricot lekvar and using almonds, hazelnuts, dried cherries, apricots, prunes, dark and golden raisins for the filling.


The jelly-roll shape of the cookies made me a little nervous, but I rolled 'em up and chilled them overnight. I tried to pinch a seal on the end of the roll to avoid the cookies opening into snail shapes as they baked. Most of them did anyway. I also found it necessary to cut the baking time down to 20 minutes to avoid burning the filling and sugar/nut coating. All in all, the rugelach recipe seemed much ado about, if not exactly nothing, than not very much. I found myself wishing I had made the adjustments my instincts told me to. These are the best looking examples:

What do you think, TWD folks? Perhaps my lekvar was too runny? My oven too hot? Did I bake them sideways? (I think so.) Check out Jessica's lovely rugelach at My Baking Heart and find the recipe with Margaret at The Urban Hiker, or on pages 235-236 of Baking with Julia.