Technology ROCKS.
I don't know how I managed in the pre-Internet days. The days when you needed a stamp to send a letter. You had to wait until 5:00 to get the latest news. And you never would have discovered that the guy you had a crush on in junior high went on to perform in a nationally touring drag show under the highly Googleable stage name of Lola Puffybuns.
Back then, if I wanted to know how to pronounce something that I wasn't sure I had ever heard, I would've looked it up in a dictionary, stared at the phonetic spelling, and wished I had paid more attention when we were being taught what those squiggly lines and accents meant.
But not anymore! Thanks to Al Gore, I have the internets! And the internets have given me www.dictionary.com. And www.dictionary.com has given me this: an audio recording of someone saying "rugelach." (Turns out it does NOT sound like "arugula." My bad.)
I can now talk about this week's Tuesdays With Dorie treat, because I now know how to pronounce it. So feel free to give me a call -- I've been practicing (especially the throat-clearing at the finish).
This is a fantastic cookie that comes together much more easily than it would seem, given how fancy they look. The dough has no sugar, so it relies on the filling to give it the dessert quality - which means that you can control the sweetness and complexity by changing up the filling.
There were a few tense moments while rolling the dough when I thought I was about to tear it, but it held up in spite of my enthusiasm. I refrained from tossing it like a pizza crust after the Golden Spouse gave me a shockingly loud look of disapproval.
In my defense, loading the dough was a lot like loading a pizza before baking. Unfortunately, there were shiny things in the kitchen when I assembled the first batch, so I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have been -- and I inadvertently used too many of the chocolate chips, which left me short for the second batch. I liked them better without as much chocolate, so I thought I was on to something -- but then GS raved about the ones that were chocolate-heavy.
Something for everyone, I suppose.
One thing I know for sure -- a dozen tasty rugelach and a tall glass of cold milk ease the trauma of finding Lola's online portfolio.(This week's recipe was selected by Piggy at Piggy's Cooking Journal -- read about her Rugelach experience and that of the other TWD bakers in the blogroll.)
