Hamentashen is a traditional Jewish pastry
made for the holiday of Purim. In the Purim story (called the Megillah, there
is a malevolent character named Hamen, who wishes to destroy all the Jews (a common
theme in history unfortunately), and he wears a three-cornered hat. Hamentashen
means “Hamen’s hat” and it is a triangular pastry. My Grandma Wachspress’s recipe
for hamentashen, provided below in both a wheat version and a gluten-free
version, uses the Hungarian Jewish kipfel dough. To make the hamentashen, first
you prepare the kipfel.
Ingredients
For the kipfel:
½ lb. butter (2 sticks) softened
½ lb. cream cheese softened
2 c. sifted flour (use whole wheat flour or,
for a gluten-free pastry, use brown rice flour)
½ tsp. baking powder
2 tbsp. honey
¼ tsp. salt
For the hamentashen filling:
1 c. poppy seeds
¼ tsp. vanilla
1 egg
1/3 c. honey
1 tbsp. grated lemon rind
¼ c. raisins
Directions
To make the kipfel dough, blend the
ingredients well, working the butter and cream cheese into the flour. This
dough has so much butter and cream cheese in it that it falls apart unless it’s
chilled. Once you have it blended into a ball, put the kipfel in the
refrigerator for 45 minutes or the freezer for 20 minutes before attempting to
work with it. When you roll it out, only roll out half the dough at first,
while leaving the other half in the refrigerator to stay chilled. Then roll out
the other half of the dough.
While the dough is chilling, put the hamentashen
filling ingredients (except for the egg,
leave that out for now) into a food processor and whirl them up for a couple of
minutes. Honestly, the traditional way to make hamentashen requires that you
grind the poppy seeds into a paste with a mortar and pestle, which Grandma W.
did. I have done this and it makes the filling wonderfully flavorful; but I
confess that I rarely have the patience to grind poppy seeds. Whirling them in
the food processor works well enough for me, but for the gourmet version you
can get out your mortar and pestle and go for it. After you whirl everything
but the egg for a couple of minutes, then add the egg and whirl the filling some
more to mix in the egg.
When the kipfel is chilled, roll half the
dough out and cut it into 3-inch circles. I suggest using a drinking glass as
your cookie cutter. For the gluten-free version, put a piece of parchment (wax
paper works OK, just not quite as well as parchment) on the cutting board
before you roll out the dough to prevent sticking. Rice flour dough tends to be
more gooey, fragile, and harder to work with than wheat flour dough.
Drop a teaspoon of hamentashen filling into
the middle of each round and fold up three edges to form a triangle (Hamen’s
hat). Pinch the corners firmly to secure the dough and to prevent it from
unfolding in the oven. You should be able to still see a little bit of the
filling (about as much as the size of your pinky fingernail) in the middle of
the pastry, but be sure to fold the kipfel tight or it will open up and flatten
out while baking.
Bake the hamentashen on a greased cookie
sheet at 375º for 20
minutes or until done. The gluten-free version needs to
bake for a little longer than the wheat version – 25 minutes should do it.
It’s challenging to use up all the dough
and all the filling in the hamentashen. I finish up this recipe by rolling out
the last piece of dough into an oval and filling it with the last of the
hamentashen filling, folding it over on itself and baking it for 20-25 minutes,
then slicing it up (see my rugelach recipe).
Eat well, be well, live deliciously!
