Recipe Tuesday :: Nutella Rugelach

Happy Hanukkah!  Now that may seem like a strange opening line for me because I'm Catholic, but let me explain.  See my mother enjoys everything religious and a few years ago she got really into celebrating Jewish holidays.  She says that we should be celebrating those as well as our Christian ones because without the Jewish religion we wouldn't have Christianity.  That seems plausible enough and in a more normal household it probably would have stopped at acknowledging those holidays in a small way but not this one.  Mom went all out.  She bought a menorah...from Israel.  And last year I got her a book how to learn Hebrew.  We buy chocolate coins and play dreidel for them.  And in the past few years we've celebrated we've gotten used to a few traditions of our own.  One of those is rugelach.  These small crescent cookies filled with Nutella goodness will make anyone a convert.  The best recipe I've found is by Rachel Phipps which you can find here at her blog (which I just noticed is from England, you know, where all good things come from!).

So first we made the dough and rolled it out...

Then slathered it in Nutella...

Sprinkled it with pecans...

Cut it and rolled them up!

Mom threw them in the oven...

And then remembered to sprinkle the tops with some coarse sugar, so they came out magically covered!

Some years it's harder to celebrate Hanukkah because it's either early in December or later and running through Christmas, but this year it is perfect!  Tonight is the first night and the last night is December 24th, so if you want to join in the celebration that Jesus and his parents and family celebrated more than 2,000 years ago please do!  You don't even have to have a menorah, just nine lights that you light adding one each night until they are all lit.  There are some great ideas for DIY projects like this one or this one.  You can go all Martha Stewart, or you can do it modern, or country or manly.  There are toddler proof ones and fun ones to do with your kids.  It's really all about taking a moment to be quiet and thankful for the blessings we've been given and people that surround us.  And if you want to expand your spiritual life and read about Hanukkah this is a great site to get you started.  I think looking outside ourselves is important and it can deepen our own spiritual life to learn about others.  And if you're not into any of that, still try the rugelach!  As Mom said, "Nothing with Nutella is bad."