I made my hamentaschen a little late this year. Instead of having them done for the Friday Purim holiday, I didn’t get around to them until Sunday. Ah well. I’m still eating them, so I don’t imagine the time limit to write about them has quite expired.

I was always told that hamentaschen are meant to represent the tricorn hat of Haman, the evil guy in the story from the Book of Esther. As a kid, I was far more focused on the cookies than the story. We’d get boxes of assorted flavors from the bakery, but everyone always went first for the apricot, strawberry, and raspberry ones, until just a few sad little poppyseed cookies were left at the bottom of the box.

For Easter brunch on Sunday, I made two batches, one apricot and one black raspberry. As we munched on them, my friend Ben and I traded hamentaschen war stories. My tale involved picking up a hot oven thermometer and having to spend an hour nursing a nasty burn. His woe was over exploding cookies that all came unfolded in the oven, spilling their filling out in a big, smoky mess.

The trick, we decided, was in the folding. In going from the round piece of dough to the small triangle shape, the last fold had to be placed carefully under the first, pinwheeling the flaps so that none of them could pop open and spill the filling. I had seen some recipes that pinched the corners, but my dough wasn’t rolled thick enough to hold straight sides, and I preferred the balanced cookie-to-filling ratio I ended up with anyway.

Though these are technically holiday cookies, I have no doubt I’ll be breaking down and making another batch in a month or two, unable to wait until next spring.

Recipe: Hamentaschen (Cookthink)

Posted by claire in craving, personal, dessert, baking | | Subscribe to this feed