Purim is coming. What does that mean to you? To me it is the megillah reading, dressing up in full costume, shalach manot, and of course the 3-cornered delicacy, the hamentash, or the plural – hamentashen. Hamentashen, in Hebrew – Oznei Haman, is a reference to the evil villain of the Jewish holiday of Purim. Haman, the bad man that we drown out with groggers during the Megillah reading, was said to wear 3 cornered hat. So from that, we make the triangular cookies that we call Hamentashen.
I don’t think I have made hamentashen in over 20 years. I am embarassed that I am old enough to be able to reference the events in my life “20 years ago.” I do remember early spring days at kitchen tables cutting out dough circles and forming them into the yummy hamentashen.
Ever since I have had my own kitchen, I have passed hamentashen by as being a job that is too time consuming – too much of a patchka (a bother in Yiddish speak). I don’t like the cakey hamentashen at my local bakery…and my daughter has been begging me to make them, with her as my dutiful assistant. She was wonderful as a chef’s assistant and I am very picky over who I let share some control over the kitchen when I am in it.
I looked over cookbooks to see what looked reasonable. I chose an easy to please recipe from Alphabet Soup, a Jewish cookbook put out by a Solomon Shechter school in Chicago. I pulled out the ingredients and got to work. The ingredient demo pictured below has a typo. I pulled out the baking soda and clicked away, before I realized that I needed baking powder. Oops!
Our hamentash fillings of choice this year were Israeli chocolate spread, and Strawberry Preserves. You can really experiment with a multitude of fillings. Poppy seed (mohn) and prunes (lekvar) are historical favorites. The hipper kosher bakeries are now filling hamentash with chocolate, peanut butter, caramel, and other good sweet stuff.
You will need: 2 sticks of earth balance or butter or transfantastical margarine; 2 eggs, 2 cups of sugar, 2 tsp. vanilla, 4 Tbsp. orange juice, 4 cups of flour, 4 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. salt, and your choice of fillings.
Mix together the butter/eggs/sugar/vanilla/OJ
Add in the dry ingredients. Mix well. I used a hand beater.
Get your prep area ready.
Roll out the dough to 1/4″ thickness. You will need extra flour on hand…on the board, on your hands, and on the rolling pan. Cut out circles of dough with a small glass.
Fill the dough circles and pinch dough into triangles around the filling. Place on cookie sheet.
Bake in 375 degree oven until done, around 10-15 minutes.
B’teavon! Chag Sameach!
