Erika's Unorthodox Rugelach

1. To Make Dough:Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Reserve. Cream the shortening and sugar together with an electric mixer until fluffy. Beat the eggs into the sugar and shortening, one at a time, until well incorporated. Mix in the vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and orange juice alternately, mixing after each addition, till the dough is uniform. It should be soft, not stiff. Refrigerate the dough for a few hours, up to overnight.To Make Filling: Toast the walnuts in a nonstick pan over medium high. When they start browning and becoming fragrant (don’t let them burn!), remove them immediately from the pan and place in a food processor. Add the remaining filling ingredients to the processor.
2. Pulse a few times till the nuts and raisins are chopped smaller. Stop long before they turn into a paste… you still the filling to be loose with texture, without any overly-large nuts or chunks.

To Make Rugelach

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Generously flour a rolling surface. The dough will be very sticky and soft, even after refrigeration, and will require a lot of flour to keep it from sticking as you roll. Take a dough ball the size of a lemon and coat it with flour. Roll it out with a floured rolling pin as thin as you can to form a rough circle. You want the dough thick enough to roll into cookies and hold the filling, but no thicker than that.
2. Sprinkle 2-3 tbsp of filling into the center of the dough circle, forming a large circle of filling in the center with a rough 1-inch border of dough around the edge. Use the rolling pin to lightly press the filling into the dough (don’t press too hard or you’ll tear the dough).
3. Using a pastry scraper, pizza cutter or sharp knife, cut the circle into eight wedges. Roll up each wedge from the center point to the outer edge (seems backwards, I know, but with this type of filling rolling them the other way won’t work). Use your fingers to gently shape the rolled-up dough and create a crescent shape. Don’t worry if some of the filling falls out as you roll… this is normal. Place the rolled rugelach onto a baking sheet, evenly spaced (the cookies will spread a little, but not much). Repeat the process in batches with the remaining dough till it’s gone. The dough is quite delicate and somewhat tough to work with, so be patient… it will take some time to get a feel for it.
4. Bake each batch of rugelach for 15-20 minutes, till the edges and bottoms start to turn golden and cookies are baked through. Cool the cookies on a wire rack.
5. This recipe will make several cookies, so Erika recommends freezing the ones you don’t eat up right away. Remember, they are great straight from the freezer!