Judy Diamondstein’s phone has been ringing with orders for Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, which begins at sundown Friday.
In January, Diamondstein started Sweetiepies, a made-to-order bakery, in her home in Allentown.
Some people have ordered apple cake and some honey cake for the holiday — as Jews traditionally celebrate by eating apples and honey to signify a sweet year.
But one of Diamondstein’s biggest sellers for Rosh Hashana is rugelach, a crescent-shaped pastry made from cream-cheese dough encasing a variety of fillings — she offers apricot, raspberry, chocolate, cinnamon-raisin, cinnamon-sugar or walnut.
“Not everybody will get honey cake, but everybody gets rugelach,” says Diamondstein, whose customers typically order three to four pounds at a time.
Shari Spark, a native of the South who teaches a course on Jewish foods to teenagers at Temple Beth El in Allentown, says she never associated rugelach with Rosh Hashana. Because of the cream cheese, rugelach is a dairy food, and dairy is more traditionally eaten for Hanukkah, the festival of lights, and for Shavuot, a harvest festival celebrated seven weeks after Passover, she says.
But since moving to Allentown from Virginia last year, Spark, too, has noticed that in this area of the country, rugelach and Rosh Hashana are a popular pair.
“My son goes to the Jewish Day School [in Allentown], and he brought home a fund-raising flyer that said to order your rugelach for Rosh Hashana,” Spark says. “It could be just a local tradition.”
Diamondstein, a native of South Jersey, says she grew up eating rugelach not only at Rosh Hashana but also at all Jewish celebrations — holidays, weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs. To her, it’s a wonderful Jewish tradition.
Rugelach fits the bill for Rosh Hashana, Diamondstein says, because “it’s sweet and it’s yummy.” Her favorite is the chocolate filled, but she gets an equal call for apricot and cinnamon-sugar filled rugelach. Nut filling is the least popular, she says.
Deciding on which flavor to order can be a dilemma, as Amy Holtz of Orefield discovered when she called Sweetiepies planning to order one or two pounds of rugelach to serve family and friends she had invited for Rosh Hashana. By the time she hung up, she had ordered four pounds because she couldn’t decide which fillings she wanted.
Like Diamondstein, she favors the chocolate. “Anything chocolate works for me, but my family is big on the fruit ones,” Holtz says.
Diamondstein, who started her business after taking a baking class at Lehigh Carbon Community College, uses a recipe for the dough from her mother, Marylee Alperin. “I remember her making it and it being a special thing,” Diamondstein says.
Diamondstein has tweaked the recipe some over the years. Her secret is in how she rolls the dough. Instead of rolling it on a floured surface, she rolls it on a surface coated with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar. “My secret revealed!” she says.
Another reason for her rugelach tasting so good, she says, is that she uses only the finest ingredients — “lots of cream, butter and other “real’ ingredients,” she says.
The dough also must be chilled, Diamondstein says, for at least three hours. Overnight is best.
The name rugelach means “little twists” in Yiddish.
The pastry — some argue it’s more of a cookie — is believed to have originated among Eastern European Jews. The immigrants brought it to America, where it gained in popularity.
In Joan Nathan’s 1998 book and PBS series, “Jewish Cooking in America,” she surmises that the cream-cheese dough may have been developed by the Philadelphia Cream Cheese Co. because the dough is often called Philadelphia cream-cheese dough.
Nathan also says that one of the early cream-cheese doughs appeared in “The Perfect Hostess,” written in 1950 by Mildred Knopf, sister-in-law of Alfred Knopf, the publisher. Mildred mentioned that the recipe came from Nela Rubinstein, the wife of the famous pianist, Arthur Rubinstein.
According to Gil Marks’ book, “The World of Jewish Desserts” (Simon & Schuster, 2000; $9.95, 432 pp. ), rugelach dough was originally made with sour cream.
Marks, a noted chef, historian and rabbi, says Jews who keep kosher and want to serve rugelach, which is dairy, with a meat meal can use the same refrigerated dough they use to make hamantaschen pastry. Hamantaschen is a triangular-shaped, filled cookie eaten to celebrate the spring holiday, Purim. Hamantaschen are named after the villain in the Purim story, Haman, and made with vegetable or peanut oil, which are non-dairy.
Diamondstein says she’s also seen recipes that call for a yeast dough.
She prefers her pastries to look more like a horn than a crescent. “I cut the dough into triangles and roll each triangle individually from the fat end to the point,” she says.
That the pastry is shaped like a horn also could make it appropriate for Rosh Hashana. During services on Rosh Hashana, a ram’s horn — a shofar — is blown to usher in the New Year.
JUDY DIAMONDSTEIN’S MOTHER’S RUGELACH
Dough:
1/2 lb. cream cheese
2 cups flour
1/2 lb. butter
Filling:
1 cup sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup raisins
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Make dough at least 3 hours in advance or chill overnight.
Blend softened cream cheese and butter. Add flour until it comes together. Divide into three parts and refrigerate.
Roll out each part into a 9-inch circle. Spread filling around circle. Cut into 16ths. Roll from wide end to the tip. Shape into crescents. Place tip side down on ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake 20 minutes.
Beth W. Orenstein is a freelance writer.
Lifestyle Editor Irene Kraft
irene.kraft@mcall.com
610-820-6597
