Raspberry Rugelach

Every year for the past eight years, Christine Trapani has given cookies to her friends and family for the holidays. "I usually include three or four kinds, but the raspberry rugelach is everyone's favorite," says the 35-year-old Brooklyn, New York, native. Unfortunately, because of their cream-cheese-and-butter base, rugelach are usually more fattening than other holiday cookies, and Trapani's recipe-which was passed down from her aunt-is no exception.

To slim them down, Nearn switched from regular to lowfat cream cheese- a smart trade in any recipe that calls for the ingredient-and used an extra 4 ounces of it as a butter substitute, trimming 350 calories per batch. Then she knocked out another 450 calories or so by using sugar-free preserves rather than regular ones, which you can easily do in any of your holiday cookie recipes that call for jam.

The final calorie-cutting measure: halving the amount of pecans. "Sure, nuts are low in saturated fat and good for you, but the calories add up fast," says Nearn. "So I matched the flavor of quick & healthy the original recipe by toasting the pecans in the oven for 10 minutes first-a trick that works for any muffin, quick bread, or cookie recipe that calls for nuts." All told, three cookies now have about the same number of calories as two of the old ones.

Ingredients

2 ½ cups whole-wheat flour
8 tablespoons (½ cup) cold butter, sliced
12 ounces lowfat cream cheese
Cooking spray
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
9 tablespoons sugar-free raspberry preserves
½ cup pecans, toasted and chopped

Directions

Mix flour and butter in a food processor until mixture forms small chunks of dough. Add cream cheese and process again until dough holds together. Divide into three equal balls. Flatten each portion of the dough into disks; wrap them in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spritz a cookie sheet with cooking spray. Combine sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and sprinkle half of it on the surface where you'll roll out the dough. Roll one disk into a 10-inch circle.

Next, spread 3 tablespoons of preserves on top of the dough. Sprinkle with one-third of the remaining cinnamon- and-sugar mixture and onethird of the chopped pecans. Cut the circle into 16 pizza slice-like wedges. Starting on the wider outside edge, roll up each wedge. Transfer to the cookie sheet and bake for 20 minutes.

Repeat process with other two disks of dough.