I'm late, I know. Purim slipped by me because I've been so busy with other things. Still, I finally managed to make some Hamantaschen. I had two recipes, and wanted to compare them. I think I like a mixture of them, so that's what the result here is. And technically, these are pareve, because they use veggie oil instead of butter.
Hamantashen
Adapted from NYT and Chabad
4 cups flour
4 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
A pinch of salt
3/4 cup of oil
3 tablespoons of warm water
Zest of 2 lemons
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Filling
Mix together flour, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, cream eggs, oil, sugar, water, and lemon zest. Create a well in the flour mixture and pour half the liquids into the well. Mix together slowly, not breaking the walls of the well. Add remaining liquids a little at a time and mix well. Turn out on a lightly floured surface and knead until a smooth dough forms. Wrap and place in refrigerator at least one hour, preferably overnight.
Divide dough into thirds and roll out into a sheet approx 1/8 inch thick. Using a 2-3 inch in diameter cookie cutter (or glass), cut circles from the dough. Transfer to a cookie sheet and drop about a tablespoon of your desired filling into the center. Fold over into a triangle, pinching the corners together. Repeat for all cookies.
Bake in a 375 degree oven for 12-15 minutes, or until the corners turn light brown. Allow to cool and enjoy.
My Notes:
I used raspberry preserves, because I could not for the life of me find anything that might resemble poppy seed filling in my grocery store and I don't like prunes.
As I mentioned above, this is a sort of mixture of two recipes. I think the chabad recipe is way too thick; it would not spread out when I tried to roll it, especially right out of the fridge (I had to warm it between my hands for several minutes before it was pliable). On the other hand, the NYT recipe was falling apart, especially as it heated, so I think it could be a little stiffer. So, I cut down the flour from the Chabad recipe and cut down the oil from the NYT recipe. I liked the vanilla, so I kept that.
I am horrible with buying fresh produce, so I just used lemon juice (in a plastic lemon) instead of lemon zest. They turned out pretty good. The NYT recipe calls for a weird way of mixing it, and I think it resulted in a less-than uniform dough at first. It's also hard to add a little egg at a time for the second half of the ingredients, so I decided it would be easier to just cream them all together on the outset and mix them into the dry ingredients slowly.
