Orange is the New Black: Larry’s Mom’s Rugelach

Larry’s Mom’s Rugelach

While I don’t recall this recipe ever being directly mentioned in the show, it’s established that Larry and his family are Jewish and Rugelach is a very popular Jewish treat.

I was procrastinating hard on this recipe.  I read through it in advance and knew that it would involve quite a bit of time.  So now, with no other Orange is the New Black recipes left on my list, I finally took the plunge.

The first step was making the dough.  They suggest using a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, but since I didn’t have that I used an electric hand mixer instead which worked perfectly fine.

The dough is made of a combination of flour, salt, butter, sour cream, and egg yolk.  It’s then divided into 3 equal-sized balls, those balls are flattened, and the dough is stored in the fridge.

After about an hour (or more) the recipe continues.

Next is making the filling: toss sugar, cinnamon, and walnuts in a food processor and blend until the walnuts are finely ground.  There!  Filling is made.

And now the really time-consuming part: forming the cookies.

The dough has to be rolled out really flat into a circle about 12 inches in diameter.  The filling is sprinkled over top of the dough, and then the dough is cut into 16 equal triangle wedges.

Once the wedges are cut, the chocolate chips are sprinkled over each wedge and (very carefully) rolled up.  Because I didn’t read the ingredients correctly, I ended up using regular chocolate chips instead of mini chocolate chips.  If you do the same, you might need to stuff chocolate chips back into the dough if/when they fall out.

The rolled cookies go onto a prepared baking sheet, and then into the fridge.

After about 30 minutes, the oven is fired up, the cookies are brushed with egg wash and sprinkled with leftover filling, and in go the cookies for 20-30 minutes until they’re browned on top.

Taste: 10/10

I wish these were easier to make, but the taste is excellent and definitely worth the effort! The pastry was flaky and fluffy, and the chocolate chips were of course really good.

These would be great to have around the holidays, since they have a cinnamon flavor to them.

Difficulty: Average

While they do take a really long time to make, only shaping and forming the cookies toward the end took some effort.

Making the dough was easy if you have a hand mixer, and making the filling was just a click of a button on the food processor.

Cost: Average

You will probably need to buy some sour cream, walnuts, and mini chocolate chips.  Other ingredients include flour, butter, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, and milk…all common items found in most homes.

Suggestion:

I recommend making these cookies in phases so you don’t get frustrated.

Start with making the dough, and then store it in the fridge until you’re ready to work on them some more.  The recipe indicates that the dough can be made a day in advance.