0 Nutella Rugelach Bar Cookies

February 5th is World Nutella Day. American bloggers in Italy, Sara and Michelle, began the holiday in 2007 to celebrate and eat that wonderful chocolate hazelnut spread called Nutella.



I participated in that very first World Nutella Day in February 2007 by baking Nutella Cheesecake Brownies and again in 2008 with my Valentine's Day inspired heart-shaped Hazelnut Nutella Sandwich Cookies.

It's been far too long since I've used Nutella. So for this 6th annual World Nutella Day I am showing some chocolate hazelnut spread love with these Nutella-filled rugelach bar cookies. I found the recipe on Hungry Rabbit and he calls them "rugetella" since it's a combination of rugelach and Nutella.

I'm not sure what my problem is but I always have trouble rolling out and making the traditional crescent shapes when making rugelach. I mean, I can do it, but I seem to always end up with some very irregular shapes and sizes. So baking the cookies in a pan and cutting them into fingers/rectangles was so much easier for me. Same great taste and less work!

Since it's supposed to be all about Nutella, a chocolate HAZELNUT spread, I embarrassingly admit that I didn't have any hazelnuts and substituted walnuts in my cookie. It was a decent last minute substitution, but next time I will definitely use hazelnuts. My sincerest apologies to Nutella for this little faux pas.

All that cream cheese and butter definitely makes a very rich and extremely flaky dough. That's the beauty of rugelach dough. And it was a great showcase for Nutella, but I can see that a sour cherry jam or bitter orange marmalade would be great as well.


Continue reading...