How to Make Rugelach, The Holiday's Most Versatile Cookie

To ready ourselves for gift-giving (and cookie-eating) season, we've declared this week Cookie Week. We'll share recipes and tips about cookies of all kinds, be they spicy or chocolate-y, chewy or crunchy, round or square. Mix up some dough and join us.

Today: Izy Hossack from Top with Cinnamon teaches us the art of making rugelach at home.

I adore making rugelach at this time of year, when a lot of family and friends are often around. It's incredibly easy to make the basic pastry for these tasty treats (which is super buttery and flaky to boot) and you can keep it in the fridge for weeks in case you have any spur-of-the-moment cookie cravings.

More: Try another version of rugelach with a pumpkin filling.

Since this recipe makes enough dough for 4 batches of cookies, you get the chance to experiment with flavors a bit -- I usually like to use different fillings for each batch by swapping in different spices, nuts, chocolates, or jams. Here I've instructed for enough filling for all 4 disks of dough, but feel free to change it up however you like.

Rugelach

Makes 48 cookies

For the cookies:

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (plus more for rolling)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 ounces cream cheese, cold
1 cup unsalted butter, cold, cubed
2 tablespoons cold water

For the filling:

2 tablespoons light brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoons ground cloves
Zest of one lemon
1 cup chopped walnuts or almonds
4 tablespoons honey, warmed

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

Photo by Izy Hossack