Chocolate Chip Rugelach

Name: Chocolate Chip Rugelach
Prep time: 2 h
Cook time: 22 min
Total time: 2 h 22 min
Ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cold & cut into small pieces; 1 8 ounce package cream cheese, cold & cut into small pieces; ⅓ cup sour cream; ½ cup white sugar; 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon; 1 cup miniature chocolate chips (or finely chopped chocolate); Splash of milk; 1 egg white; Raw or granulated sugar, for sprinkling

by Rachel Conners on Dec 4, 2010 (updated Dec 27, 2020) 12 comments »

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★★★★★ from 2 reviews

These Chocolate Chip Rugelach are easy, delicious cookies made with cream cheese to stay super tender and flaky! This post has step by step photo instructions.

Happy Channukah guys! This is by far my favorite time of year. I love when all the lights start going up, wreaths adorn all the doorways, and holiday music is playing everywhere you go. It really just makes me happy. But as we all know, the holidays are the most stressful, busiest times of year. That’s why you need to make all of your cookies ahead of time. Honestly, who has time to worry about cookies when your entire extended family is in town? That’s why I’m giving you my favorite rugelach recipe. It’s super easy to whip up in your food processor, and with my step-by-step photos you’ll be a rugelach master in no time at all. So…for today, I’m going to skip the meanderings about my day to day life and get right on to the cookies. Sound good? K good. Let’s do it.

By the way: I didn’t show the making of the dough because the pictures ere horrible and it’s quite simple and quite boring to read about, so we’re moving onto assembly.

First: get out your cute little mini chocolate chips and think about how cute and little they are. Then put them in a bowl. After that, mix together your sugar and cinnamon. Set aside until needed.

Next, generously flour your work surface. When I say generously, I mean generously. Get crazy with your flour, fasho. Get one of your dough balls (you’ll have four) out of the refrigerator and flour that like crazy too. Put it on your floury work surface and make SURE it’s well floured. We want NO sticky, or your life will be miserable and you’ll cry. I did the first time I made these because I didn’t have enough flour. Ask my grandma. It was sad.

Get out your handy dandy rolling pin. Flour that too. Roll out your dough into a rough 9 or 10 inch circle. Flour flour flour. Make sure the bottom of your dough isn’t sticking to the counter either. Flour. It’s your BFF for this recipe.

If you wanna be like me, you can get our your clear bowl that used to be a fruit salad bowl and put it over your dough. Or, you want to be normal, you can get a normal 9 or 10 inch bowl. Make sure your dough goes around the diameter of the bowl.

Get your pizza cutter (or your knife) and cut around the bowl. Put the extra dough to the side. I guess if you were good at making circles you could skip the bowl step and just cut out a circle, but I i bad in geometry so I like the bowl.

Admire your beautiful circle. Flour it some more if you want.

Time to bring that cinnamon-sugar back into the picture. Sprinkle the mixture generously over the circle and press it in to the dough with your rolling pin, try not to deform the circle too much though.

Put your mini chocolate chips on the dough now. As many as you want, but not too many or your rugelach will fall apart. Push them in VERY gently so you don’t break the dough. Then maybe put some chocolate chips on the counter and try and take some artsy pictures. Maybe you won’t fail as miserably as me.

Cut your dough into twelve equal slices. Being geometrically challenged, I like to first cut four pieces and then cut three of each of those. Start rolling! Grab the end of the dough and roll it towards the center of the circle. This should be easy if you’ve floured generously enough. This is where you cry if you haven’t. Don’t mind my obese sausage finger and their invasion into this picture.

Keep rolling until this is what’s left.

Look at those beautifully chocolaty rolls. I can almost taste them…oh wait. I can taste them because I’m totally eating one right now. Ha! Sorry. I’m just taunting you now.

Get out an egg. Crack it. Get rid of the yolk, save it for ice cream or something. Whisk the whites with a splash of milk and brush onto all your rugelach. Be gentle, you don’t want to knock off any cute little chocolate chips or mess up your beautiful rolling job.

Sprinkle generously with sugar. I prefer raw (AKA turbinado) but granulated would be fine too. You could even use the extra cinnamon sugar if you’re resourceful like that.

Put foil or parchment paper onto a baking sheet and move your rugelach onto the new, clean baking sheet. Baking them on the foil with the egg drippings and sugar will cause the sugar to caramelize with the egg whites and the bottoms of the cookies will burn. Put them into the oven for 22 minutes or until golden brown. While this batch is cooking, repeat with the three other sections of dough.

Let your cookies cool and serve! Or eat them all yourself, whatever floats your boat. They also freeze beautifully, just make sure they’re wrapped airtight.

Mmmm…enjoy!!

P.S. These can also be made by using a jam instead of the chocolate chips. Just spread on before putting on the cinnamon sugar. Some people put nuts too, or raisins. Whatever filling you want would probably work. Go crazy.