Girl Behind the Apron: Hamantaschen

In honor of Purim yesterday, I baked some hamantaschen which I typically do every year. You know, those funny triangular-shaped cookies usually filled with jam. I used to make these with my grandma, and I remember the first time I made them on my own- I was 15 and I was in a cooking class at school and we had a project to cook/bake and present a dish. I made these Hamantaschen and instead of the traditional jam fillings, I made a marshmallow chocolate one.

I stuck to my grandma's dough recipe that I use every year and made some with apricot and raspberry jam. I tried something new this time though and made some with a chocolate filling, almost a brownie-like batter. Delicious, but many of them lost their pretty triangular shape because they were over-filled.

I found the filling recipe in Jewish Home Cooking by Arthur Schwartz, and although the recipe says to fill each with 2 tsp of chocolate, I only used 1 tsp and next time would probably use about half that.

They are pretty simple cookie to make, sometimes they get a little misshapen, but its okay because they always taste great!

Hamantaschen Recipe
(inspired by my grandma)
Dough
- 3 cups AP flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 stick (8 tbsp) butter, cold and cut into chunks
- 2 eggs
- 2 egg yolks
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp cold water, if dough is too dry

Filling
- apricot, raspberry, or any flavor jam- 1 tsp per cookie
- chocolate filling:
- 6 oz semi sweet chocolate
- 1 stick butter
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 1/4 cup AP flour

-1 egg +1 tbsp water for egg wash
- sugar for sprinkling

To make the dough: In a food processor, pulse together the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder. Add the buter and pulse until it looks like a coarse meal. Beat together eggs and yolk with vanilla and slowly pour in while mixer is running. Add 1 tbsp of water if needed.

The dough will be crumbly, but if you press some together with your fingers and it stays, you know its ready. Turn it out onto a floured board and gather into a big ball. Divide in half, shape into disks and wrap tightly in plastic and refrigerate at least an hour.

Preheat oven to 350F.
Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface to about 1/4 inch thickness. Use a 3 inch cookie cutter [*Tip, a glass would work as well] and cut out circles and place them on a lined baking sheet.Re-roll the dough and repeat the process until its used up.

Place a teaspoon [or 1/2 for the chocolate] of filling in the center of each dough circle. Brush the edges with eggwash. To seal them, pinch both sides up to form a triangle. Make sure they are sealed well or else the sides will fall down while baking. Brush the sides with more eggwash and sprinkle with sugar if desired.