I love creating new traditions with my little ones. Cooking and baking is something we all enjoying doing as a family. We especially like to bake for the holidays and share our love for family and friends with sweet treats. Last year was the first time I made Hamantashen with the kids and we had a great time.
I have great memories of baking with my mom when I was a little girl. It was an activity I thoroughly enjoyed and maybe the reason why I enrolled in Culinary Arts.
I have the fondest memories of enjoying Friday night dinners at Abuela Sara’s. Abuela cooking in the kitchen, accompanied by her four daughters. The scents of Abuela’s cooking still bring back memories of the whole family gathered together celebrating Shabbat. As I was reading about Purim, the Jewish holiday that falls on March 20th this year, I was very intrigued as to why I never had Hamantashen growing up. I learned that this beautiful triangle shaped filled cookie, called Hamantashen, is a different version of the cookies Abuela made called Ma’amoul which is the Sephardic version. Hamamtashen is definitely easier to make with kiddos, but when they are a little older I hope we get to bake both versions.
Purim is a great holiday for kids to engage in and learn about their religion. Nothing beats a holiday where you get dressed up, make crafts, bake treats and use noise makers to drown Haman’s name.
My kiddos cannot stay away from the kitchen if I am cooking and they are always asking to help, so baking with them is one of our family traditions.
Last year was our first attempt at making Hamantashen and since I thought of this on the fly, we used ready-made pie crust (Trader Joe’s has a great pie crust!) to skip a step and just have the kiddos cut the crust with round cookie cutters, add the filling and fold the corners to make a triangle. These triangle shaped cookies are traditionally filled with poppy seed, prunes, fruit preserves, etc. Since we are not a traditional family, we made Nutella Hamantashen.
We will be using Melinda Strauss’s recipe by Kitchen Tested this year. This recipe makes 2 dozen Hamantaschen.
Ingredients
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup oil
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
Mix together the egg, oil, sugar, and vanilla extract. Add the flour, baking powder and salt and stir until a smooth dough is formed. Roll out the dough to around ¼ inch thick then cut circles using a cookie cutter or glass cup.
Place a teaspoon of filling in the center of the circles. We use Nutella, but you can also fill them with fruit preserves,poppy seed, chocolate, etc. The possibilities are endless. Pinch closed to form a triangle.
Bake at 350 for 12-15 minutes.
On Purim, it is customary to deliver gift baskets (Misloach Manot or shalach manos) to family and friends. So, this year I thought we could bake a double batch of treats and create mishloach manot to share with friends.
If time allows, we will also be trying a few of these recipes:
I hope you give this recipe a try, even if you don’t celebrate Purim.
I always love when you share your recipes! Thank you!