Holiday baking: Rugelach with prune filling

It's been a over a year since I made some delicious rugelach-cookies with hazelnut filling. After seeing a very talented young American pastry chef, Heidi Park (now based here in Tallinn), sharing her recipe for rugelach-cookies in a local food magazine, I felt the urge to make these again. I used my old recipe, and adapted the filling from Martha Stewart's recipe for Prune Rugelach.

Very pleased with the final result, so sharing it with my dear readers :)

Rugelach with Prune Filling
(Rugelach-küpsised ploomitäidisega)
Makes 32 small pastries

For the pastry:
200 g butter, softened
200 g full-fat Philadelphia cream cheese, softened
2 tsp caster sugar
200 g all-purpose/plain flour, sifted
a pinch of salt

For the filling:
200 g dried plums/prunes
100 ml brandy or cognac

Breadcrumb mixture:
4 Tbsp breadcrumbs
4 Tbsp caster sugar
0.5 tsp cinnamon

For glazing:
1 egg white, beaten with a little water

On the night before:

Pour brandy over the prunes and let soak for up to 24 hours.

Cream the warm butter and cream cheese until well blender. Beat in the sugar, then stir in the flour and salt. Mix until the dough begins to hold together, press into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and chill overnight in the fridge.

On the day of baking:
Combine the breadcrumbs, sugar and cinnamon.

Puree the prunes with the brandy until smooth.

Divide the dough ball into two and return the other half into the fridge. Roll out the pastry on a slightly floured surface into a thin circle about 25 cm /10 inches in diametre. Using a sharp knife or a pizza-wheel, cut into 16 equal wedges.

Brush the surface of the wedges with half of the prune puree, then sprinkle half of the breadcrumb mixture on top, spreading evenly as you go. Using your hand or a rolling pin, press the filling tightly down into the dough (there seems to be a lot of filling, but it'll make the pastries only nicer!).

Carefully roll up each wedge tightly, starting from the wider, outside end. You'll end up with 16 mini croissants. Brush with egg white wash.

Cover a baking tray with parchment paper and bake at the middle of a preheated 180 C/350 F oven for 20-30 minutes, until the rugelach are golden brown.

Leave to cool slightly, then transfer to a wire rack.

Repeat with the second half of the pastry - even straight away or on the following day.

One very knobbly Jerusalem artichoke, one very silky mushroom soup

Have you ever seen a recipe for Jerusalem artichoke/Sunchoke/Topinambur-something that begins with "Wash and peel the Jerusalem artichokes". I have. While I obviously understand the washing bit, then I'm a bit unsure about the peeling. See the specimen above? That's just one example of an artichoke I had to deal with earlier today, when preparing lunch for K's mum who came to visit her grand-daughter (who's doing splendidly, by the way:)). Have you ever seen such a knobbly Jerusalem artichoke before? It was beautiful - crisp and fresh, but had I attempted to peel it, there wouldn't have been much left. So I gave it a very good wash and scrub, and simply chopped it. And that's what I'll do from now on - I'll only buy Jerusalem artichokes with thin and beautiful skin, so I can omit that tricky "peel the artichoke" bit...

The inspiration for combining mushrooms and Jerusalem artichokes came from one Estonian monthly, but I've changed the process and proportion so considerably so there's no need to credit anything specific :)

Jerusalem artichoke and mushroom soup
(Maapirni-seenesupp)
Serves 4

250 g Jerusalem artichokes (aka topinambur aka Sunchokes)
250 g mushrooms
1 medium yellow onion
2 Tbsp butter
600 ml water
400 ml whipping/heavy cream (use single/light cream, if you prefer)
salt
freshly ground black pepper
fresh thyme, to garnish



Wash and peel (or not :)) the Jerusalem artichokes. Peel the onions. Clean the mushrooms. Chop all into small chunks.
Heat the butter in a heavy saucepan, add the artichokes, onion and mushrooms and sauté for about 5 minutes. Season with some salt.
Add hot water, bring to the boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 10-15 minutes, until the Jerusalem artichokes are softened.
Transfer into a blender and purée until smooth.
Return to the saucepan, add cream and reheat. Season with salt and pepper (and some dried porcini or chantarelle powder, if you wish), garnish with fresh thyme and serve.
Some shaved Parmesan cheese would also be nice.

Almond and Clementine Cake, Claudia Roden style

Christmas and clementines go together. At this time of the year, the shops are flooded with tiny clementines from Morocco and slightly larger specimens from Spain, and I keep buying wooden trays of the orange fruit. Mostly we simply eat them au naturel, but I've been experimenting with few dessert and cake recipes as well.

There's a lovely recipe for flourless almond and orange cake in Claudia Roden's excellent book on Jewish food that I had been wanting to make for ages. The idea of boiling whole oranges and using the whole lot - zest, pith, fruit - in a cake sounded intriguing. Nigella Lawson has adapted the recipe and uses clementines, but I followed Claudia's original instructions here. However, I used clementines instead of oranges, and an excellent Swedish clementine-flavoured glögg Blossa instead of orange flower water. We loved the resulting cake a lot - slightly bitter (from the zest and pith), very moist and just rather unusual. We'd definitely make this again - and perhaps try the original version with oranges as well. (Mmmm - perhaps even those gorgeous red 'blood oranges' when they appear in the shops in a few months?).

You want clementines with thin skin here and as little white pith as possible. That's why I chose the thin-skinned Maroc-clementines here. Oh, and it'll be a much easier job if the clementines have no or just a few seeds.

Almond and Clementine Cake
(Mandli-mandariinikook)
Serves 10

400 g clementines (about 8-9 small fruit, preferably organic and unwaxed)
6 large eggs
250 g sugar
250 g blanched ground almonds
1 tsp baking powder
2 Tbsp orange flower oil or citrus liqueur

Wash the clementines carefully in hot water. Place in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring into a boil and simmer on a low heat for about 60-90 minutes, until the clementines are soft.
Drain the clementines and cool a little. Cut into halves, remove any seeds. Place the clementines into a food processor and blend into a coarse purée.
Whisk the eggs and sugar into a thick and pale foam.
Blend ground almonds with baking powder, then fold into the egg foam.
Stir the orange flower water or Blossa glögg into the clementine mixture, then gently fold into the rest of the ingredients.
Pour the batter into a buttered and lined 26 cm springform tin.
Bake in a preheated 180 C oven for about 45 minutes, until the cake is golden brown on top. Test for doneness with a wooden toothpick - it should be clean after inserting into the middle of the cake.
Cool before transfering the cake onto a serving tray.