My mother was never much of a baker but I always have enjoyed the chance to get lost in the kitchen with a recipe, some ingredients, the right background music and an open block of time. I’m not an artist, so my baking is my creative outlet ( along with my sporadic writing of mindful musings) and it allows me the chance to ‘taste’ a recipe as it is written and then modify it to my own gustatory specifications hopefully resulting in something delicious, appealing to look at and pleasing to whomever my audience is.
I started making rugelach back in the early 1980s when I was a nurse in Dallas and was asked to contribute cookies to a Christmas cookie exchange at the hospital. This was before the days when homemade food was suspect, nuts were poison and Covid had made us wary of anything that wasn’t hermetically sealed.
Being Jewish I wanted some recipe that spoke to my background and the foods known to come from ‘Jewish origins’ so I was delighted to find a recipe for rugelach in Bon Appetit, my favorite source of culinary inspiration for years. Never having had let alone made rugelach, I copied the recipe and bought the ingredients to give it a try anticipating it would be perfect for my contribution to the cookie swap. They were exactly what I had hoped for and have since turned them into my ‘ signature’ offering.
For the past forty years, I have been baking rugelach regularly and have shared them with family, friends, coworkers and customers since I began baking them. People contact me for the Jewish holidays, special occasions and special desserts. I have made them sweet and savory, with or without nuts, and experimented with a variety of fillings. They have been a consistent hit. For a while, between jobs, I baked them for a local bagel shop.
On several occasions I have been asked to share my recipe or teach people how I make them. At first I was reluctant because I wanted it to be my secret, but lately I have willingly shared the directions for making these treats. I even did a Zoom class during the pandemic for a group of interested folks.
Despite the steps involved in making these delightful cookies, I always enjoy the process as much as others seem to enjoy the end result. I bring them to people’s houses for dessert and try to always offer them at a Shiva gatherings following a Jewish funeral where offering something sweet to the mourners is a tradition. A young friend of mine, Emi, refers to the rugelach that I have taught both she and her grandmother to make as my “ twisty Jewish cookies”. To me, they are my labor of love.
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