Cinnamon rugelach with dried cranberries and walnuts

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This easy recipe for rugelach filled with cinnamon, walnuts, and cranberries is my favourite. We make these cookies every year for the holidays and everybody loves them. The rolling and filling method is simplified so that this recipe is faster and easier to follow.

Rugelach on a yellow plate with a cup of tea.

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These cinnamon rugelach with dried cranberries and walnuts are extremely popular around the holidays. The cream cheese dough is easy to work with and so forgiving. And the filling with cinnamon and dried cranberries is downright festive without being fussy or overthought.

Rugelach Cookie Ingredients

Rugelach cookies have two key components: an easy cream cheese dough and a filling. The dough is always the same, made of cream cheese, butter, flour, and salt, but the filling varies depending on the recipe.

You will need the following ingredients to make the best rugelach:

Ingredients to make rugelach with a cream cheese dough and filled with cinnamon, walnuts, and dried cranberries.

For the cream cheese dough:
- butter, preferably unsalted butter because you will add a lot of salt to the dough, from both fine kosher salt and cream cheese. If you have salted, it will work. Just adjust the salt in the recipe accordingly, otherwise your cookies may be too salty...
- cream cheese, preferably the Philadelphia brand regular cream cheese sold in a block of 250 grams. This recipe uses the entire block.
- all-purpose flour is needed to bind all the ingredients of the cream cheese dough together and give the cookies structure. If you don't use enough flour, your cookies may spread too much as they bake
- salt is really important to balance out the sweet filling and enhance the savoury nature of the cream cheese dough. Don't skip it. I like to use Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt, but table salt will work, though the cookies will be saltier and you may want to halve the salt in that case.
For the rugelach filling:
- walnuts but you could use pecans or almonds if you prefer
- dried cranberries but dried cherries will also work or dried apricots too would be lovely in this recipe
- granulated sugar though brown sugar would also work here and would add to the molasses flavour. Brown sugar may also lead to a slightly thicker cookie
- ground cinnamon is added to the filling to make these cookies very flavourful
- cream is needed to bind the filling ingredients together but also to help the tops of the cookies brown and to help glue the cinnamon sugar coating on the surface of the cookies
- vanilla extract adds a ton of flavour to the filling and I highly suggest using the full amount. If you are using an artificial vanilla extract, that will work too, but you may have to use less because it tends to be more potent than the real extract.
For the topping and to make the cookies sparkle:
- cinnamon sugar is the secret to making the cookies sparkle on top and also to add a little more flavour since the dough is plain and unsweetened. You can buy it or make cinnamon sugar yourself!

Please see the recipe card for the exact ingredients and quantities.

How to Make Rugelach

Traditionally, most bakers create crescent-shaped rugelach cookies, rolling triangles of dough and filling like croissants, but I've found the method takes too much time. My results this way weren't always as nice and the cookies tended to vary too much in size and shape, making baking them properly very tricky. This method makes it much easier and faster to make these cookies. And the shape and size are more consistent too.

I have made this recipe every Christmas for the last twenty years and tested a lot of different ways to shape the cookies. Over the years, I've changed many steps in the process to streamline the process and make the recipe more consistent, easier, and faster.

Making a cream cheese dough for rugelach in a stand mixer bowl.

Step 1: Start by making the cream cheese dough. Combine softened butter and cream cheese in the bowl of a stand mixer (image 1) and mix until the two ingredients are well mixed, soft and creamy (image 2). Add flour and salt to the mixer bowl (image 3) and mix to form a shaggy but well-mixed dough (image 4).

Dividing cream cheese dough into equal portions before shaping and wrapping in plastic wrap to chill.

Step 2: Once the dough comes together, divide it into 4 equal pieces with the help of a kitchen scale (image 5), shaping each into a square and wrapping in plastic wrap (image 6) to chill in the refrigerator until firm, at least 1 hour (image 7).

Tip: Chilling the dough is important to give the flour time to hydrate, the gluten to relax, and to cool down the butter so that you can roll the dough easily. Cold doughs also help ensure the cookies don't spread.

Preparing finely ground filling for rugelach in a food processor with toasted walnuts, granulated sugar, dried cranberries, lots of cinnamon, vanilla, and some cream.

Step 3: Combine the ingredients for the filling in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal S-blade (image 8) and process into a fairly medium–fine texture (image 9).

Collage to show how to roll and shape rugelach, first rolling cream cheese dough into a rectangle, then covering with ground nut and cinnamon filling from edge to edge before rolling into a log.

Step 4: Roll out each portion of dough to roughly a 7x13 inc (18x33 cm) rectangle (image 10), trimming the edges to straighten them (and patch if necessary). Scatter one-quarter of the filling from edge to edge, pressing it into the dough to anchor all the little bits (image 11). Roll the dough as tightly as possible into a 13-inch (33-cm) log (image 12). Make sure to finish the roll seam-side down so that the seam is under the log of dough.

Tip: These rugelach are rolled and cut the way you would sticky buns or these Crock-Pot cinnamon rolls. The longest part of this recipe is the hands-off time for chilling and baking.

Shaping and cutting rugelach cookies filled with cinnamon, sugar, toasted walnuts, and dried cranberries.

Step 5: use a ruler or a measuring tape as your guide to mark the dough evenly so that you can cut the log into 12 to 14 equal portions, creating slits every inch or so (~2.5 cm) (image 13). Then cut the dough into cookies using a large chef's knife or a bench scraper (image 14).

Rugelach cookies topped with cinnamon sugar, before and after baking on a parchment paper-lined sheet pan.

Step 6: Place the rugelach cookies upright on a parchment paper-lined sheet pan (image 15), spacing them out and staggering them to allow for air flow. Bake until golden brown (image 16) and baked through until the center of each cookie has set.

Fillings for rugelach cookies

Rugelach are always made with the same cream cheese dough. It is a savoury dough, made without sugar, that has a slightly tangy flavour from the cream cheese. The dough really helps the filling shine!

Traditional rugelach cookies are filled with jam, cinnamon sugar, or a filling of cinnamon sugar with ground nuts. You may also see chocolate-filled rugelach. The ingredients are ground together in the bowl of a food processor to make a coarse filling that resembles wet sand.

Other fillings you can try:

chocolate filling made from chopped chocolate, sugar, and cinnamon,
nutella or your homemade nutella without hazelnuts if you prefer
jam or homemade preserves, like this plum jam would be great here!

Baking rugelach so that they don't burn

The fillings for rugelach tend to be heavy in sugar, dried fruit (or jam), spices, and nuts. The trouble with rugelach is that these tasty fillings can burn in the oven if you aren't careful.

You'll notice from the photos that I bake the rugelach standing upright. I don't lay them on their side. There are a few reasons for this:

to make sure the cranberries and nuts don't burn
to make sure the cookies keep their shape and that the swirl of dough and filling doesn't unravel

If you choose to shape these rugelach cookies the way I've outlined, make sure to bake the cookies standing up, with the seam hidden underneath. The weight of the cookie ensures that the seam doesn't unravel. Do not lay the cookies down flat to bake them!