Sour Cream vs. Cream Cheese, etc.

[Mezzaluna]

I've just made another batch of rugelach using a sour cream dough. There's another recipe for rugelach in the same cookbook that uses cream cheese and sour cream in the dough. One uses butter, the other uses margarine.

How do these doughs' ingredents affect the respective doughs? Could I replace the margarine in #1 with butter and still have a nice dough? then there's the egg.... I've made recipe #1 many times (although I bump up the amount of filling). It's good, but how would #2 be different, and why?

Here are the recipes (from The Jewish-American Cookbook by Raymond Sokolov, 1989) I've never made recipe #2.

Thanks!
Mezz

Rugelach 1
1 pound margarine, softened
2 cups sour cream
4 cups unbleached flour
Combine; form dough into a disk, wrap and chill overnight.

Filling
1 T cinnamon
5 T granulated sugar
1-1/2 cups chopped, toasted almonds or walnuts
1 cup raisins
1 stick butter


Divide dough in 6 equal pieces. Roll into 6" circles, 1/4 inch thick. Cut into 8 wedges. Brush with butter, sprinkle with filling, roll into "horns" and bake 30 minutes. Makes about 48 rugelach.

Rugelach 2
1 stick butter, room temperature
4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup sour cream
1 egg
1-1/2 to 3 cups unbleached flour
1/4 tsp. salt

Filling:
1/2 cup apricot preserves1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup raisins
Cinnamon

Cream together butter and cream cheese. Beat in sour cream and egg, followed by salt and 2-1/2 cups flour. The dough should be smooth and elastic. Add up to 1/2 cup more flour if necessary to give it body. Form into a ball, wrap and refrigerate at least 4 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Divide dough into four equal pieces. Roll each piece into a circle 1/8 inch thick on a floured board with a floured pin.

Heat the apricot preserves until spreadable. Bursh the circles of dough with the preserves. Sprinkle on the nuts, sugar and raisins, then dust lightly with cinnamon. Cut the circles into wedges about 3 inches at the base. Roll form the base up tot he point to form crescents and pinch closed. Place on greased cookie sheets and bake 30-40 minutes. Mkaes about 40 rugelach.

[m brown]

the tang of the cheese flavor, the softening time on the dough would be the major differences and the filling on #2 has less fat (but it's rugelach, who's counting???)

What brand of margarine are you using could it be SMART BALANCE?

You could change out the butter for margarine for sure but the butter may have less moisture, in this type of cookie, I don't think that would read as a bad thing. May give you better color too.


My question to you is why the change? Do you have cream cheese and butter in the house and need to utilize or are you having a taste test?

How is that book in general?
I love getting ready for the holidays, all of 'em.

[Mezzaluna]

Thanks for the feedback, Michele. I was curious because I've always made recipe #1 but would rather use butter than margarine. I've been using Land o'Lakes, not Smart Balance (which I use for my english muffin, sometimes thinking of Cape Chef ). I noticed my recipe didn't brown well, which is another reason I wondered whether I could swap for butter.

As for the book: I like it. My test when looking at Jewish cookbooks is the chicken soup- his was a good recipe. I've made the teiglach from this book too but it's not really my thing. I made at least one of the noodle kugels and the walnut candy called nuant. It's a good selection of Eastern European Jewish dishes and gets a thumbs up from me.