Nut rolls: Twelve Days of Christmas Cookies

LisaDecember 16, 2014

Welcome to our Twelve Days of Christmas Cookies link up! For the next two weeks, join us every day and add your favorite cookie recipe for that day’s theme. Please follow Lisa and Lindsay and check out some new blogs! Happy baking!

Today’s cookie theme is traditional family recipes. Many families in these United States still celebrate holidays with tastes of the old countries. Italians host a Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve, Irish ring in the New Year with corned beef. My mom’s Irish family grew up in the melting pot of southwestern PA. Lots of the families in that area are Irish, Italian, or Polish, so this mishmash created some unique traditions and sharing of traditions. This recipe for nut rolls came into our family through my grandfather’s best friend’s Polish mother-in-law. They also aren’t too different from rugelach.

It’s a bit labor intensive, but the cookies are sweet and so good. The dough also needs to chill for at least six hours, so I would recommend making the dough a day or two before you bake the cookies. Both the dough and the filling for the nuts rolls are very savory. They don’t have any added sugar. The sweetness comes when you roll the dough out in sugar instead of flour. You can also sprinkle sugar on top of the nut rolls before you bake them.

Nut rolls

Total Time: 50
Yield: 4-5 dozen 1x

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Ingredients

Scale

Dough

1 lb margarine
1 cup scalded milk
1 tsp salt
3 pkg dry yeast in ¼ cup warm water
3 eggs, beaten
6 cup flour

Filling

1 cup milk, scalded
2 lbs walnuts, finely ground very fine grind is best)
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

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Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°F.
Combine margarine, one cup of scalded milk, and salt.
Cool completely. Stir in eggs and yeast. Add flour. Stir until combined.
Cover with a towel and set in refrigerator (or if it is really cold, outside) for at least 6 hours.
Make filling: Temper eggs with a few tablespoons of the second cup of scalded milk, and add to remaining milk. Add sugar and vanilla. Fold in nuts.
Roll a quarter of the dough in sugar in a rectangle or circle to about 1/16 in thickness. Chill remaining dough until it is used.
Using a knife, cut dough into long strips, about 2 ½ in. wide.
Spread filling along long side of strip and roll jelly-roll style.
Slice the roll into individual cookies, about 2 inches long. Sprinkle top with sugar.
Repeat with remaining quarters of dough.
Bake at 350°F for 20-25 min, until golden brown
Remove from pan and cool.

Enjoy!

Notes

This recipe can easily be halved. Just use two packets of yeast.
It is extremely important that you use sugar instead of flour when you roll out the dough. Yeast dough is very savory, so the sugar is added here instead of in the dough.
If you don’t want to do the jelly roll, you can roll the strips like cinnamon rolls then slice them about 1/4 inch thick. Bake for the same amount of time.

Prep Time: 35

Nut rolls: Twelve Days of Christmas Cookies