Hamantaschen are filled butter cookies eaten during the Jewish holiday of Purim. Triangular-shaped, they symbolize the three-cornered hat of Haman, the villain in the Purim story, and are typically filled with jam or preserves, chocolate, or nuts.
This year, Purim (a moveable feast based on the lunar cycle) occurred on March 2nd and 3rd, and Robin and I hosted a small party to celebrate the holiday. The tradition is for someone to tell the Purim story of how the Jews were saved by Queen Esther from annihilation by the evil Haman, and every time Haman’s name is mentioned, you’re supposed to boo and hiss and make a racket with horns and noisemakers. People dress up in costumes and wear silly hats, and also eat lots of food—including Hamantaschen cookies.
Oh, and you’re supposed to get drunk, too. Which makes the noise-making all that much more fun.
This recipe will yield anywhere between 20 and 30 cookies, depending on how big you make them, and how thinly you roll out the dough. The fillings I used were: fig jam, orange marmalade, chocolate and Reese’s chips, trail mix, and pieces of Snickers bars. But feel free to use whatever strikes your fancy!
And you don't have to wait for Purim to make these--they're delicious any time of year!
Hamantaschen
Ingredients
1 stick (½ cup) salted butter, softened
¾ cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk
1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract (depending on how vanilla-y you want them)
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour, plus more as needed and for rolling out
¼ teaspoon baking powder
¼ to ½ teaspoon salt (I used ½ teaspoon, because I like a bit more salt in my baked goods)
fillings for the cookies (jam, chocolate, etc.)
Directions
Using a mixer (hand-held or stand), cream the butter and sugar in a medium bowl until smooth, and the sugar has mostly dissolved.
Add the egg and vanilla and continue to mix until well-blended.
In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt. (Most recipes say to sift them together, but I didn’t bother, and my cookies came out fine.)
Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and mix until the flour is completely incorporated.
If the dough is too soft, add more flour, a tablespoon or two at a time, until it’s firm like a cookie dough should be. (I ended up adding 5 more tablespoons to mine. But note that I’m in Hawai‘i, where it’s quite warm and humid—as they say, your milage may vary.)
Form the dough into a disk, then wrap it in plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least 1 hour, and up to 24 hours.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Dust your rolling surface with flour, then roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick. (Because of the heat, I cut my dough in half and rolled it out in two portions, keeping the second half in the fridge till time to roll it out.)
beginning to roll out the dough
Using a 3-inch round cookie-cutter or a wine glass (as I did) cut into disks and place on a cookie sheet. (It’s okay if they’re close together, as once folded, they’ll take up less room.) Once you’ve cut out your disks, make the remaining dough into a new ball, then roll it out, repeating the process until all the dough has been used.
[Note that I neglected to take a photo of the dough after it was fully rolled out, or of the cutting process. Sorry! But you can see the wine glass I used as a cookie-cutter.]
Fill each round of dough with a teaspoon or so of whatever filling you like.
Fold the dough over the filling, pinching three corners together to make a triangular-shaped cookie. (Make sure you pinch them together well, so they don’t come apart while baking.)
Place the baking sheets in the fridge for 10 minutes, to ensure that the cookies hold their shape as they bake.
Bake for 7-10 minutes, until the edges start to turn a golden brown. Let cool fully before eating, as the fillings are hot and will burn your mouth!
Enjoy!
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