[Sca-cooks] Kiffles, was: Question to the List - Sweet Turkish Crescents

[Tara]

> Recipe please!  My mouth is watering and the weather is cool enough today to
> bake.

Sure!  :)

Kiffles
-------
Serves: There are never enough kiffles to go around.
Calories: Too darned many, considering you can never eat just one.  Or
ten.
Preparation time: There's a reason we only make these at Christmas
time...

Pastry:
2 c. flour
2 sticks butter
1 package cream cheese
Cream ingredients together, break into workable sized pieces,
refrigerate.  When cold, roll out as finely as possible and cut into
long diamonds, about 6"x3" on the diagonals.  Fill, roll, bake at 375f
for about 13 minutes.  When cool, drop them in a bag of powdered sugar
or sprinkle it on with a flour sifter.

Fillings:
Apricot butter (if you live in eastern PA, Bauman's is *great*.)
Prune butter (lekvar, can find it in cans at the grocery, or sometimes
at ethnic delis.)
Nut (ground walnuts and/or pecans, a bit of butter, and beaten egg
whites to make 'em stick together.  I usually do 3/4 walnuts, 1/4
pecans.)
Poppyseed (I never liked this one, so I don't have a recipe for it.  I
expect it would be like the nuts.)

Hints:
Put the filling about 1/3 of the way between one of the long points and
the center of the diamond, not right in the center.  Fold the corner
over the filling, then put your index fingers on the corners thus made
and roll it up, keeping the corners nice and tightly sealed.  Bend it
into a crescent as you put it on the cookie sheet.
Fiddle with the filling amounts.  The fruit butters tend to expand a lot
when baking, and if there's too much in any one kiffle it may pop,
ruining both it and the one next to it.  Well, they're never ruined,
they're just too ugly to serve.  You have to eat those ones quickly so
nobody finds out...  I find that fruit butters take about 1/2 tsp each,
and the nut filling takes about 3/4 - 1 tsp.
If you can't roll the pastry out finely enough in sheets, try breaking
off walnut sized pieces and rolling them individually into ovals. I
can't quite read newsprint through mine, but I can discern the printed
lines from the paper background.
I used margerine instead of butter by accident one year.  Made the
flakiest darned pastry I've ever eaten.  But, the dough was so oily and
difficult to handle that I'll never do it again.
Make extras.  They go fast.  Take any that break on the cookie sheet and
use them as distractions to try to protect the rest from your family.  I
usually toss them to my husband, who stands salivating in the doorway,
as I package and hide the rest.

Have fun!
Magdalena

P.S. Hey!  There are bunches of people on this list in the Eastern PA
area, say within a 3-hour drive of Lehigh Valley.  Anybody want to do a
cookie exchange at Christmas?  The ones I've seen at work always end up
being mostly plain ol' chocolate chip and sugar cookies.  But, I suspect
that with this crowd we could get some darned cool treats going around!