my great-grandmother's hamentaschen recipe

[holli]

3/4 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter or margarine (Crisco if you want 'em parve)
1 egg
2 T orange juice
Filling of choice-- poppyseed, prune, blueberry or cherry pie filling, chocolate.

Mix sugar, flour, BP, salt in bowl; work in softened (NOT melted) butter
separate bowl-- mix egg and OJ, then add to rest of ingredients; mix until it's dough.

Refrigerate 1 hour.

Roll out, cut into circles-- use a cookie cutter or a large drinking glass for this. Place large spoonful of filling in center of each circle, and pinch dough into a triangle around it, so cookies look roughly like this. Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes.

Cookies will be crisp when they first come out of the oven, but seal them in Tupperware for the night and they will get soft and ridiculously yummy.

Enjoy!

Comments

[debg.livejournal.com]

I go off and on with them, or did, until I discovered that when made properly, they're the cookie of Haven itself, especially with a poppyseed paste filling. Those I'd have to make myself, though - don't trust people not to put almond in there, which would kill me.

>(Crisco if you want 'em parve)

I keep forgetting that oleo has traces of dairy in it.

[larisa57.livejournal.com]

mmmmm, hamentaschen. You don't know HOW much I've been craving those lately.

[flyingtapes.livejournal.com]

Yum! I'll have to do that. Maybe when I go home for Spring Break...

What are you doing for SP?

[holli.livejournal.com]

Going home Friday! And I may get to go to New York next weekend.

[flyingtapes.livejournal.com]

Sounds awesome. What are you doing in NY? Family?

[cindyamb.livejournal.com]

Holli is an evil temptress—topped only by Miss Nilly and her Sufganiyot pimping—knows I consider converting for food when each holiday rolls around!

Ymmm. I'm tempted to try these, but I'm always afraid to try a new recipe, not because I'm afraid of new things, but because I don't know what hamentaschen are supposed to taste like. I suppose it doesn't matter, but when a food has an ethnic link, I want my results to approach authenticity.

[holli.livejournal.com]

Hamentschen vary widely by recipe, so don't worry about them tasting "right." This recipe's different from most, anyway-- it uses different proportions of ingredients, and the resulting cookies are much softer and yummier as a result. So go for it!

[cindyamb.livejournal.com]

What's your favorite filling? Also, filling with chocolate--what would that entail, making sort of a ganache?

Darn, LJ should have an edit function for replies.

[cindyamb.livejournal.com]

Is Hamentschen a Yiddish word, or Hebrew? Can you approximate it in English?

Re: Darn, LJ should have an edit function for replies.

[holli.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think the chocolate ones are the equivalent of the chocolate-chip bagel-- new, and not to be entirely trusted. The most old-school hamentaschen are made with poppyseed or prune filling, but this particular recipe works best with pie filling, especially blueberry, cherry, or apple.

And the name is Yiddish, and means, literally, "Haman's ears." Apparently he had funny-shaped ears.

Re: Darn, LJ should have an edit function for replies.

[cindyamb.livejournal.com]

Eww. Okay, I'm totally against chocolate chip muffins and didn't even know about the bagels. I will make with fruit when I attempt these.

Haman's ears, huh? Well, they must have been funny looking, because I doubt they were nibble-able, what with the hanging and all.

Re: Darn, LJ should have an edit function for replies.

[larisa57.livejournal.com]

The trick with hamentaschen is to make sure to really pinch the corners closed. If you just fold the sides up, but don't totally seal the corners, the whole thing collapses as it cooks, and you end up with a circle of dough with a spoonfull of filling on top, and the filling sort of melts and ends up dripping off the cookie and getting all over the cookie sheet. (I somehow manage to forget that every year, and always mess up the first batch I make.)

[dizzi-k.livejournal.com]

I'll definitely try this recipe! I just ate an apricot filled one, YUMMY...
(this is my second comment, since I don't think my first one worked, but if u see two, don't think I'm a weirdo :P)