The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap Reveal

Today's the day!! I finally get to reveal the cookies that Rona and made for this year's Food Blogger Cookie Swap. For those of you just hearing about the swap, it's this adorable idea started by Julie of The Little Kitchen and Lindsay of Love & Olive Oil.

The concept of the cookie swap is this: Receive the addresses of three other food bloggers. Send each of them one dozen delicious homemade cookies. Receive three different boxes of scrumptious cookies from other bloggers. And finally, post your cookie recipe on your blog.

I've had about a week and a half of gorging on delicious cookies, so it's about time I share/hit a gym.

The cookies that Rona and I chose to make are.....drum roll please......rugelach!


Rugelach is a traditionally Jewish pasty that has a croissant-like shape and can be made with a variety of fillings. The fillings we used in our rugelach pastries were nutella apricot & pecan and strawberry walnut & apricot. It was our first time making rugelach, and between the 72 cookies we needed to make for the blog and additional 30 something we made for family, the kitchen was kind of a disaster. The rugelach on the other hand was not.

Dough Ingredients
1 cup butter or margarine (2 sticks), softened
1 package (8 oz) cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour

Filling Ingredients
Nutella
Strawberry Jam
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 cup pecans, chopped
3/4 dried apricots, chopped
1/4 cup backed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon


Procedure

1. Prepare dough: In large bowl, use a mixer to beat butter and cream cheese until creamy. Beat in sugar, vanilla, and salt. Beat in one cup flour. With wooden spoon, stir in remaining cup of flour until mixed well. Use your hands if necessary.

2. Divide your dough into four even quarters. Wrap each quarter and refrigerate until firm.

3. Prepare filling: In medium bowl, combine walnuts, apricots, brown sugar, a little granulated sugar and cinnamon until well mixed. Rona and I made 2 variations of this filling, but there's a lot of room to be creative. We alternated nuts and spreads between these fillings but the rest of the ingredients remain the same.

4. On a floured surface, use a rolling pin (also floured) to flatten your dough into a even round. The size of this round will determine the size of your cookie. We went for about 9-inch rounds. Evenly spread either nutella or strawberry jam (depending on which filling you chose) over the dough. Sprinkle evenly with your nut mixture, gently pressing to make sure it stays.


5. At this point in the process, your rugelagh will look like an uncooked pizza. Use a pastry wheel to cut your dough into 12 even slices.

6. Starting at the curved end, roll up your rugelach in a croissant-like fashion.


7. Place cookies an inch apart onto a greased cookie sheet. Repeat with next 3 quarters of dough.

Feel free to get creative with fillings if you choose to try to make this! They were a lot of fun to prepare and it was even more fun to participate in the cookie swap.

So back to the swap...we have some thank yous to give out. Rona and I have received some really great cookies from food bloggers from all over the country. It's rare that I get packages that aren't from Piperlime or Amazon or any other retailer...online shopping addict right here.

Rona and I would like to say a big thank you to those people who made us these amazing cookies. We can't wait to see the recipes!


Not everyone gave us a link to their blog but for those of them that did, here is a little shout out.

Becky--http://thecerealbaker.blogspot.com
Elise--http://theculturaldish.blogspot.com
Callye--http://www.sweetsugarbelle.com
Elena--http://twinklemaroon.blogspot.com/

Becky, sorry that your cookies were not included in the pictures. Since Rona received them first, they were all gone by the time that we realized that we should take pictures!

Sorry for missing the other 2, I didn't catch the name of your blog, but if you post a comment with the name, I'll make sure to edit.

Thanks for reading!

~Alyssa