Blueberry Pecan Rugelach

These blueberry pecan rugelach are perfect for celebrating the wonderful blueberries available this time of year.

These rugelach are super tender, just slightly sweet, and filled with a mixture of freshly-made blueberry jam and pecan meal. They're really hard to resist. 

The dough for these cookies is made with butter, cream cheese, a small amount of sugar, spices, and flour. You also make your own jam filling, controlling the amount of sugar in this cookie. The fresh blueberries add much of the sweetness. 

The result is a soft bite-sized fruit and nut filled cookie with just a hint of sweetness. Feel free to adjust the sugar in the blueberry filling to your taste. Note: you can always use preserves or jam of any flavor to save time. 

About Rugelach: 

Rugelach's roots are as an Eastern European (Ashkenazi) Jewish pastry made with a yeasted dough. It was pretty labor intensive. 

In the United States, around the 1950s, as cream cheese worked its way into Jewish-American homes, especially as a schmear for lox and bagels, the community discovered that packaged cream cheese, added to the rugelach dough, produced a super tender dough without all of the work. 

Ironically, in today's Israeli bakeries, rugelach is slightly different than the original yeasted version in that it resembles French pastry, probably because many Israeli pastry chefs train in French pastry schools. 

The name means "little twists" or "little corners" in Yiddish. 

References: Bake from Scratch Magazine, Sept/Oct 2017 and Kosherline Gourmet Gifts. 

Ingredients in these Rugelach: 

This recipe is really easy, and includes simple to find ingredients. 

For the Dough: 

Dairy: Butter and cream cheese. 

Pantry Ingredients: Powdered sugar, baking soda, salt, and flour. 

For the Jam:

Blueberries and sugar. 

For the Filling: 

All of the jam, ground pecans, and cinnamon. 

Process to Make These Rugelach:

First, make the jam: Cook the blueberries in a saucepan with a little bit of sugar. You will be reducing the berry mixture by more than half to really concentrate the blueberry flavor. Be sure to smash them as you cook them. 

Next, make the dough: Combine the butter, cream cheese, baking soda, and salt in a stand mixer and beat on medium speed until smooth. Add the flour, in two stages, and mix on low until just combined. 

Roll out the dough into three 12-inch disks and sandwich the disks between sheets of parchment paper. Place the disks in the refrigerator for an hour. 

While the dough is chilling, prepare the filling by combining the blueberry jam, the pecan meal, and some cinnamon. 

Once the dough has chilled, spread the filling over the dough, leaving a half inch border. 

After that, using a pizza wheel, cut the dough, as you would a pizza, into 16 wedges. Beginning with the wider end, roll each wedged into a spiral. If you like, you can also turn the ends to make a crescent. 

Brush the dough with an egg wash and sprinkle with sugar or sparkling sugar. Repeat with the rest of the dough. 

Finally, bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, for about 20 minutes. 

Equipment You May Need: 

Parchment paper, both for rolling out the dough and baking. It's also great for sandwiching the dough in the refrigerator. My favorite is the pre-cut sheets. 

Pizza wheel. While not necessary, it sure makes cutting the dough into the wedges easy peasy. 

Half sheet pan, for baking. 

Stand mixer or hand mixer, for mixing the butter and cream cheese. 

Food Processor: For grinding the pecans into a meal. 

Rugelach Recipe Variations:

You can also chill the butter and cream cheese and mix the dough in a food processor to make a dough similar to pie crust. The dough will be a bit flakier, but a little harder to work with. I preferred this technique and it was so much easier. The hardest part was clearing room in the refrigerator for the pan stacked with the 12 inch disks of dough.

While the most traditional filling is typically fruit and nuts, you can get totally creative, even making them with savory fillings. In fact, if you're intrigued, try a sugar-free dough so that you can play with onions, garlic, cheeses, and sauces, such as pesto. They'd make great appetizers. 

Sweet filling variations could include chocolate, cinnamon, other jams and nuts, and nutella. 

While I used ground pecans (pecan meal), you could instead use coarsely chopped pecans (or other nuts) for a more chunky filling, as pictured below. It's a little harder to work with, but just as delicious. 

This week, the Sunday Funday group is celebrating National Blueberry Month. Be sure to check out everyone's recipes that include blueberries. 

Recipes with Blueberries: 

• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Asian Sweet and Spicy Salmon with Blueberry/Pineapple Salsa 
• Amy’s Cooking Adventures: Blueberry Cactus Bread 
• Palatable Pastime: Blueberry Lemon Cornbread
• Karen's Kitchen Stories: Blueberry Pecan Rugelach 
• Sneha's Recipe: Microwave Blueberry Muffin 
• Culinary Cam: Pickled Blueberries 
• Food Lust People Love: Sparkling Blueberry Cocktail

Blueberry Pecan Rugelach

Yield: 48 cookies

Author: Karen's Kitchen Stories

Prep time: 1 HourCook time: 20 MinInactive time: 1 HourTotal time: 2 H & 20 M

These blueberry pecan rugelach are perfect for celebrating the wonderful blueberries available this time of year.

Ingredients

For the Blueberry Jam

• 1 generous quart of fresh blueberries, washed and stems removed
• 4 tsp sugar

For the Filling

• 60 grams (3/4 cup) pecan meal (ground pecans)
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• All of the blueberry jam

For the Dough

• 85 grams (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, slightly softened and cut into slices
• 170 grams (6 ounces) cream cheese, slightly softened and cut into pieces
• 90 grams (2 ounces/1/2 cup) powdered sugar
• Heaping 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 255 grams (9 ounces/2 cups) unbleached all purpose flour
• 1 large egg, beaten with a tablespoon of milk
• Sparkling or granulated sugar

Instructions

To Make the Blueberry Jam

1. Place the blueberries into a large saucepan and sprinkle with the sugar.
2. Cook over medium heat, stirring and mashing the blueberries as they cook until the mixture is reduced to about 1 1/2 cups.
3. Cool completely.

To Make the Filling

1. Add the nuts and cinnamon to the jam, stir, and divide the mixture into thirds.

To Prepare the Cookies

1. Cream the butter, cream cheese, sugar, baking soda, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer or with a hand mixer on medium speed, until smooth.
2. Add one half of the flour and mix on low speed. Add the other half of the flour and mix on low speed until just combined.
3. Divide the dough into thirds. Form each piece into a round disk and place each onto a large sheet of parchment paper. Roll the dough out with a rolling pin into a 12 inch disk.
4. Stack the disks, sandwiched between the sheets of parchment, and place them onto a sheet pan or tray large enough to handle the 12 inch rounds. Refrigerate, covered with plastic wrap, for at least an hour and up to two days.
5. When you are ready to bake the cookies, position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat it to 350 degrees F.
6. Taking out one dough disk at a time, remove the top piece of parchment from the dough.
7. Spread the jam mixture onto the dough disk to within 1/2 inch of the edges.
8. Using a pizza wheel, cut the dough in half, then in quarters, then in eighths, and finally into 16ths, as you would a pizza.
9. Roll each piece up beginning with the wider edge, and place on a parchment lined baking sheet. You should be able to fit all 16 rugelach onto one baking sheet. You can reuse the parchment that you've used for rolling out the dough.
10. Lightly brush each cookie with the egg wash and sprinkle with the sparkling sugar.
11. Bake for 17 to 23 minutes, until lightly golden around the edges. Mine took about 20 minutes.
12. Allow the rugelach to cool on the baking sheet for 3 minutes, and then cool on a wire rack.
13. Repeat with the other two disks.
14. Once the cookies are fully cooled, they can be stored in an air tight container for up to a week.

Nutrition Facts

Calories

74

Fat (grams)

4 g

Sat. Fat (grams)

2 g

Carbs (grams)

10 g

Fiber (grams)

1 g

Net carbs

9 g

Sugar (grams)

5 g

Protein (grams)

1 g

Cholesterol (grams)

7 mg

Karen's Kitchen Stories

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First published August, 2014. Fully updated July, 2024. 

Recipe for the dough adapted from Simply Sensational Cookies by Nancy Baggett, published in 2012. It's an amazing cookbook. With more than 200 recipes, it is well worth the investment.