No, this is not some sort of weird April Fool’s joke I’m playing on you all. Yes, I am writing about hamantaschen a full month after most of the world cares about these tri-cornered cookies with bellies full of fruity jams and jellies.
They are traditionally eaten around the Jewish holiday Purim, as their shape mimics the shape of the hat of Haman, the “bad guy” in the story of Purim. I don’t know anything else about the holiday, other than that Mordechai and Esther were also involved and Purim is usually celebrated in early springtime. (All this I learned from a 4-year-old I used to tutor when I asked him if I could have one of his hamantaschen. He half-explained the story of Purim and then said no.)
But I don’t think there should be an “expiration date” on when it’s acceptable to eat hamantaschen. (I also feel this way about chocolate-peanut butter eggs, which can and should be eaten every day.) They’re delightful — the cookie dough itself is barely sweet, allowing the fillings to really shine. And while traditional fillings include prune, poppy seed and apricot, when I made these with friends a few weeks ago, we chose raspberry and Nutella.
My first hamantaschen-making experience was in preschool, so as you imagine, I didn’t do much more than fold and pinch corners. I can’t remember what those looked like, I’ll assume they were ugly, since folding and pinching doesn’t generally hold the corners together. Instead, I found a folding and overlapping technique from Melissa Clark that promised better results. Helen was a hamantaschen folding machine, so our perfect triangles are her handiwork.
While the recipe is a bit of a challenge, mostly due to the crumbliness of the dough (and also our lack of counter space and a rolling pin), the effort is all worth it. The raspberry ones were the perfect mix of sweet and tart, and the jam is a little caramelized from the oven and I may or may not have fought my roommates over them.
The Nutella ones were surprisingly not as good as I thought they would be — they were too sweet and one note for my taste. A dark chocolate ganache with some orange in it would work here if you wanted to go the chocolate route, but just using store-bought seedless raspberry jam creates superstars, so I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble.
I suppose you could wait until next year’s Purim in order to make these. But who really wants to miss out on a year’s worth of delicious cookies? Not me friends, not me.
Cream Cheese Hamantaschen
Recipe from Epicurious
– 2 cups all-purpose flour
– 1/4 cup sugar
– 1/8 teaspoon salt
– 1 stick (1/2 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
– 4 ounces (1/2 cup) cream cheese, cut into bits
– 1 large egg yolk
– 1 teaspoon vanilla
– 2/3 cup filling such as seedless raspberry jam, apricot jam, etc. (we used 1/3 cup of seedless raspberry jam and 1/3 cup of Nutella)
1) In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar and salt to combine. Then add the butter and cream cheese, using a pastry blender or two knives to pulse the mixture until it resembles coarse crumbs.
2) Add the egg yolk and vanilla to the flour mixture, pulsing just until the mixture begins to come together (do not overmix). Gather the dough into a ball and flatten into a disk. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour and up to 2 days.
3) Preheat the oven to 375° F. Halve dough. On a lightly floured surface, knead half of the dough (the other half should still be wrapped and chilled) 2 or 3 times to make it less crumbly. (This will be pretty difficult — the dough is very crumbly.)
4) Roll out the dough to 1/4-inch thick. With a 3-inch cutter (or a glass cup), cut out as many rounds as possible. Transfer rounds with a metal spatula to a large baking sheet, arranging them about 1/2 inch apart. Re-roll the scraps and cut out more rounds.
5) Put 1 teaspoon of filling in the center of each round and fold up the edges to form triangular cookies resembling a tri-cornered hat, pinching corners together and leaving the filling exposed. Pinch the dough tightly enough so that the seams are no longer visible and the sides are taut enough to prevent cookies from leaking filling as they bake. (See the photo above for step-by-step visuals.)
6) Bake the hamantaschen in the middle of oven for 20 minutes, or until pale golden. Cool hamantaschen on the baking sheet for 5 minutes and transfer to the racks to cool completely. Make more hamantaschen with the remaining dough and filling in same manner.
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