Maple Pecan Date Rugelach / ABC December

Bad Bad picture... real good cookies!

December already and I haven't done much baking.. You would think I should be up to my elbows in flour and splashing butter and cream all around, filling the house with the scent of spices. Not yet, not yet!
The problem is that I always want to try something new but also want to revisit what we all love, like oven baked doughnuts for instance, or the mandel bread, a christmas stollen of course, bejeweled cookies...

So reality and thoughts interfere, sometimes so much that something is on my to-try-list for several years. This month's assignment was to bake Rugelach from Flo Braker's book, Baking for all Occasions! You see Rugelach was on my list. It was on my list for several years. Confession time.

I managed to find ground poppyseed filling on our annual shopping trip in Germany. For three years on a row. It sat in the basement. For months on end. Until it was past it's due date and I had to bin it. For three years on a row. *blush*

Luckily I'm quite stubborn and when I found myself in a German supermarket a couple of weeks ago, again I bought a bag of ground poppyseed. On the back of the bag it said that you had to mix it with a couple of tablespoons of milk and you were ready to go.


Since rugelach are easy to adapt to all kinds of filling that is what I did. I followed the recipes outline of using a filling with chopped walnuts, maple syrup, dates and cinnamon sugar. And that my dear friends was divine!!! Really really good. The poppy seed filling? Not so much. Quite tasteless I'm afraid. Did some research and I think I should have mixed some more flavour in it by using lemon and such. Will try again, there's half a bag left and this dough is wonderful to work with and makes excellent flaky crust.

I really loved this month's baking, the dough was an eye-opener and the filling -above- so yummy!
Have to apologize for the crappy pics... Made the rugelach quite early in the month, took some "action shots" and expected to make better pics in daylight... that just didn't happen. They were gone before I knew it and I didn't find the time to bake them again. So this is it!

(to see what the other ABC-bakers made please check the blog list on the right hand side of the ABC blog or follow the links in the comment section. Thanks!)