Rugelach

I made rugelach for Shabbat dessert for the first time ever.  It was much easier than I expected.  Despite looking at several yeast based recipes, I used this cream cheese dough instead, making some modifications to personalize it as well as make it parve.  These are very very forgiving cookies which can be modifyied to suit whatever is easy and appealing at the moment.   The next time I make them I will try more variations.

I should have made the dough on Thursday rather waiting until Friday.  I usually make the batter for whatever cookies I am making in advance and then bake them right before Shabbat.

I put the cream cheese out to come to room temperature but forgot to put out the margarine. I left it sit for a bit but it still took more beating than it should have and did not leave me much time chilling the dough.  
 I opted for discs rather than logs because that is the look I am used to.Each disc only makes 8 cookies, so an entire batch is only 32 cookies and goes really fast

 For two of the discs, I used up  the remaining lemon-pear marmalade I had lying around.  For the last two discs I used my homemade peach preserves as the base.  I ran out of chocolate chips after the second disc, so I chopped up some chocolate bar instead, yielding chocolate chunks. Good chocolate makes a clear taste difference.

I debated skipping the egg wash and sugar sprinkle but I am really glad that I did not.  They give the cookies a really nice golden shine and a yummy crunch.