These rugelach would’ve been a lot better if only I’d remembered how much I dislike orange marmalade and used another jam instead, like apricot. Or strawberry, even. Marmalade is so bitter! Is it just me? Also, the recipe made two to three times more filling than was needed, which I realized early on, and yet I continued to follow the instructions, faithfully slathering way too much filling onto the dough and struggling to roll it up into cylinders because jam was overflowing all over the place. And doing this four times, with four pieces of dough.

Although if the filling didn’t contain marmalade, its overabundance wouldn’t have been such a problem. But that still wouldn’t have saved these little pastries from looking awfully silly and unrugelachish. Come to think of it, though, why go through all the bother of making the filling, with the walnuts and the dried fruit and the simmering and the pulsing? Why not just use store-bought jam and call it a day? Is that blasphemous? Yes. Forget I suggested that.

The husband really liked these though, or claims to have. He said they were like the best hamantaschen ever, since hamantaschen never have enough filling but hello, I believe mine did. And if I was going for hamantaschen I would’ve made hamantaschen, but I was going for rugelach. And since I only baked off one of these cylinders, I have three more taking up room in the freezer that I sort of don’t ever want to bake because they’ll just make me angry.

Whoops, how’d that slip in there? And no longer bitter. Well, maybe still a little bit bitter.

Orange-Apricot Rugelach, adapted slightly from Leite’s Culinaria

Ingredients:

For the dough

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting work surface
• 1/4 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into chunks and chilled
• 8 ounces cream cheese, cut into chunks
• 2 tablespoons sour cream or Greek yogurt
• 2 large egg yolks