Rugelach - cooking recipe

Ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, room temperature
1 teaspoon lemon, zest of, finely minced
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 cup walnuts, finely chopped
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 pinch table salt
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 egg
1 teaspoon water
coarse sugar

Preparation

Cream butter, cheese, and zest with a mixer on medium speed.
Sift dry ingredients and add; blend just until incorporated (use a wooden spoon if hard to mix).
Shape dough into a thick log and divide into three 8-oz. portions.
Wrap each piece in plastic and flatten into a disk.
Chill dough overnight before using.
Preheat oven to 350\u00b0; line baking sheets with parchment paper.
Prepare (but keep separate) walnuts, cinnamon-sugar (mix 3/4 cup sugar with the 1 TBS cinnamon), melted butter, egg-water wash (mix egg with the 1 tsp water), and sprinkling sugar.
Lightly dust work surface with flour.
Flatten a chilled dough disk lightly with rolling pin, then roll it into a 12\" circle, 1/8\" thick.
Flip dough often to prevent sticking.
Ragged edges are normal.
If there are big gaps in the dough, just trim off a little dough from another area (any place it goes over 12\") and patch it in inches.
Lightly brush the dough with melted butter; sprinkle 1/4 cup cinnamon-sugar over the entire surface.
Then sprinkle 1/3 cup chopped walnuts on the sugar.
With the rolling pin, gently press the nuts into the dough all the way across the circle-this will help keep the nuts in place when you roll up the cookies.
Use a pizza wheel to cut 16 wedges-first cut the circle in half, then in half again to make quarters. Now cut each quarter in half, then again to make 16.
Starting at the wide end of a wedge, roll it to the center of the circle to make a crescent.
Place on a prepared baking sheet, point down, spacing 1\" apart.
Gently brush cookies with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake 20-30 min., or until brown, rotating pan halfway through baking.
Cool rugelach on racks.
**Special Tip**:
Rugelach rules are minimal-here is how to roll, assemble, and bake.
Rolling: It's fine if you don't roll a perfect circle (I can't!). The dough will crack at the edges- that's okay! Once the round is roughly 12\" across, patch gaps with dough trim from the sides.
Assembling: Don't skimp on cinnamon-sugar and nuts when assembling rugelach. You'll think it's overloaded inside, but most of the cookie's flavor comes from the filling. Coarse sugar sprinkled on top makes festive-looking rugelach, but if you don't have it, just use a good amount of regular sugar.
Baking: Of these three rules, baking is most critical. Rugelach must be baked long enough-they're thick in the middle and will take longer to bake than most other cookies. Your goal is a cookie with rich browning all the way around-but not too much!