Date Rolls

Ingredients

• 4 cups flour
• 1 packet baking powder
• 1 packet vanilla sugar
• 200 grams butter
• half cup orange juice
• third cup oil
• 1 can date spread

Preparation

In a mixer, combine flour, baking powder and vanilla sugar.
Add the butter and keep mixing until the butter is fully incorporated with the flour.
Add the orange juice and keep mixing.

Continue mixing in the mixer and gradually add the oil until you get a uniform, smooth dough.
The amount of oil is up to a third of a cup, but sometimes you don't need all of it, depending on the weather, so add it tablespoon by tablespoon and mix until a smooth ball of dough forms.
How do you know the dough is ready? It pulls away from the bowl easily, and you can see the clean bowl underneath the dough.
It's not advisable to overmix the dough, otherwise the cookies become hard.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour so it firms up.

Divide the dough into three equal parts.
Roll each part of dough into a thin sheet.
Spread each sheet with date spread and roll into a log.

Place the rolls on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.
Cut the rolls with a bench scraper, not a knife. To make cutting easier, you can put the tray in the refrigerator for half an hour, so the dough firms up and becomes easy to cut.
Bake at 160 degrees for about 40 minutes.
When you take the rolls out of the oven they look like they aren't baked inside. That's fine, leave them like that. The cookies dry out and stay soft rather than hard and dry.
Separate the cookies with the bench scraper.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar.
Store in an airtight container.

You can replace the dates with chocolate spread, halva spread, poppy seed filling, or jam.

Tip - fillings that tend to spill out of the roll during baking, such as jam or chocolate, are best sprinkled with a little, but really only a little, cornstarch, breadcrumbs or ground nuts. These ingredients thicken the runny filling and prevent it from leaking out.