No-Guilt Rugelach

Popular rugelach is not guilty pleasure anymore! This recipe for no-dairy, no-butter, no-oil, no-egg rugelach will make you and your loved ones happy. Did I mention it's gluten-free for those who care?

- Regular recipe for rugelach calls for butter, cream-cheese, eggs and other stuff I don't eat now. If you are vegan or whole-food plant based (as yours truly) then you will love this recipe.

- Rugelach is great as a Christmas cookie option, looks festive and usually disappears first.  

- You won't miss real butter flavor of regular butter-based cookie dough because this recipe uses mostly almond flour which gives our rugelach maybe even better flavor than that buttery one ;)

- If you want even healthier version of rugelach, replace sugar with date paste and consider nut/dates mixture for filling.

- As egg replacement I use ground flax seeds, which is a really healthy ingredient as it is the main source of Omega-3 among plants.

- If you don't have tapioca flour (it's actually readily available in a most groceries these days), you can replace it with corn of potato flour. I didn't try it yet but it should work.

Healthy Rugelach

For about 24 rugelach :

• 4 tbsp ground flax seeds
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3 cups almond flour
• 1 + cup tapioca flour (or corn or potato flour)
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• apricot and black current preserves (or other your favorite preserves for filling)

- Preheat oven to 350F.

- Make replacement for eggs by mixing ground flax seeds with water and vanilla. Set aside.

- Mix remaining dry ingredients, add flax mix and make a dough. Transfer dough onto mixing surface sprinkled generously with tapioca flour. Continue to knead dough incorporating some tapioca flour until dough is pliable and no longer sticky.

- Roll the dough in 4mm circle. Use pizza cutter to cut it into 3"x3" squares.

- Spoon a little bit preserves in a center of each square. Use thin metal spatula to transfer dough square on your palm. Fold opposite corners, lightly pressing in a center for corners to stick together. If corners are unfolding, use a drop of water to moisten them to stick together. It was not necessary for me to do this, they were staying in place just fine.

- With a spatula transfer rugelach on a baking sheet, covered with parchment paper. Bake in a preheated to 350F oven for about 15 minutes until lightly gold-beige in color. 

- Enjoy!



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IN PICTURES

Ground flax mixed with water. Here I'm adding vanilla to it. My choice of vanilla is liquid vanilla mix from Mexican grocery, it gives really great flavor, better than any other vanilla, including crazy expensive real vanilla bean.

Dry mix. This recipe takes a fare amount almond flour, which is not cheap. I buy my almond flour in a big bag in Costco.

Mix wet and dry ingredients together.

It seems too dry, just continue to mix.

It's pretty sticky dough at first impossible to roll out, so keep kneading and mixing in tapioca flour.

Now dough looks good to roll it out.

Pizza cutter is great for this type of work.

I perhaps overfilled it a bit ;)

If you don't like tapioca flour on a dough, just brush it lightly with damp brush. It's not necessary though.

I new I put a little much filling. Also some preserves tend to become too runny in an oven. Anyway, cookie looked great on a plate and disappeared before I took a picture of them on a plate ;)