Dec 17, 2012

Hamantaschen (Jewish Holiday Cookies)

These cookies are traditionally served on the Jewish holiday of Purim, although they make a great snack year round. This recipe first appeared in our Jan/Feb 2013 issue along with Betsy Andrews's article Hamantaschen.

Credit: Todd Coleman

MAKES ABOUT 2 DOZEN

INGREDIENTS

4 oz. cream cheese, softened
8 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
¼ cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
¼ tsp. kosher salt
1 cup flour
2 tbsp. apricot preserves
2 tbsp. raspberry preserves
1 egg white, beaten

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a bowl, combine cream cheese, butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt, and beat with a mixer until fluffy. Add flour; beat. Form dough into a thin disk. Wrap disk in plastic wrap; chill for 30 minutes.

2. Transfer dough to a floured surface; roll to a 3⁄16" thickness. Using a 2½" round cookie cutter, cut dough into rounds. Reroll scraps; repeat. Transfer the rounds to 2 parchment paper�lined baking eets. Place about ½ tsp. apricot preserves in center of half the rounds; place about ½ tsp. raspberry preserves in the center of remaining rounds. Brush egg white around edges. Fold in edges to form a triangular package, leaving a small opening at the top. Refrigerate filled cookies for 30 minutes.

3. Heat oven to 350°. Bake cookies, one sheet at a time, until lightly browned, about 15 minutes.

This article was first published in Saveur in Issue #153

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Ratings & Reviews (4)

by LAURIEKG on 2013-01-28

I have to say I'm a bit saddened by this recipe. What I know to be a cookie full of complex flavors and textures has been reduced to a glorified thumbprint cookie. My grandmother, originally from Odessa, spent her adult years in New York not only making and sharing amazing hamantaschen, but also teaching others at the local city college how to make them. Turns out I'm the last in my family to reproduce these traditional gems.

by ejm on 2013-01-30

We're just waiting for these to cool. We used tart plum jam in the center. Not having ever had Hamantaschen before, we have nothing to compare them to. They seem darn good to us.

One thing we had to do was bake them for about 10 minutes longer at a very low temperature. We also found that looking at other recipes was most useful for understanding how to fold the circles.

It would be helpful, LaurieKG, if you pointed out more exactly what it is about the SAVEUR recipe that you find lacking. Is it because the dough doesn't call for lemon or orange zest? (Googling several Hamanteschen recipes, all call for either lemon or orange zest)

-Elizabeth

by ejm on 2013-02-18

We've now made these twice - both times using tart plum jam instead of apricot or raspberry. We were flummoxed that the recipe strangely calls for 4 oz cream cheese and 8 Tbsp butter. Not that it's strange that it calls for cream cheese and butter. In fact, the addition of the cream cheese is what attracted us to the recipe. It's that it calls for 4 ounces of one and 8 Tbsp of the other. Why not just say 4 ounces of each? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, this is right, is it not?

8 Tbsp butter = 4 ounces butter

The other changes we made to the recipe were to put in much less vanilla extract, using just the smallest splash and omitting the egg white to just use water to help seal the edges.

In our rather cool kitchen (16C or so), it was a big mistake to chill the dough for 30 minutes. It made rolling out the dough and folding the circles very very difficult.

Thank goodness for the internet to learn exactly how to "fold in edges to form a triangular package, leaving a small opening at the top". There's a great photo essay on the bottom of this page: theshiksa.com/2012/03/01/how-to-make-perfect-hamantaschen

-Elizabeth

by KAZHOUND on 2013-03-02

ok, I sort of have to agree with LAURIEKG. I actually first made hamantaschen with the nondairy dough recipe from theshiksa.com actually referred to here by ejm, but those weren't the hamantaschen of my youth so I was disappointed. They were too crispy, not cakey at all. The prune filling from there was spot on though. So I tried these. They were *delicious*. But also not really hamantaschen dough. I used the prune filling I already had made and also apricot filling from theshiksa.com (too tart as it turned out) so I didn't use preserves, as recommended, which I think would have made them seem even more like thumbprint cookies. So these were flakier and more delicate than what I think of as hamantaschen dough and were great as cookies, but I'm still going to keep trying to find the right recipe that really tastes like hamantaschen. It's not just the citrus zest, it's just not the right kind of dough.

Also, I had to add a lot more flour to get the dough to hold together, perhaps it was more humid here.

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