February 25, 2018

Tender Flaky hamantaschen with Prune Filling


Make 3 dozen small-medium pastries

Dough
1 & 3/4 cup all-purpose flour (add more flour, if you need)
1/2 cup (8 tablespoons) butter, cold and grated on large holes of the grater
1 egg, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup cold water

Filling
10 oz (almost 300 grams) prunes or raisins, snipped or cut into small pieces
About 3/4 cup (180 ml) orange or apple juice
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon jam, such as apricot, cherry or orange marmalade
1 tablespoon dry breadcrumbs

Powdered sugar for dusting


Place flour in a large bowl. Add the butter, working it in to make a coarse/crumbly mixture. Leave most of the butter in large, pea-sized pieces.

Stir together egg, lemon juice, salt and water in a glass. Add to flour-butter mixture and, using hands, make a cohesive dough. Cover with plastic wrap and chill the dough for 30 minutes before using.
Meanwhile, make a filling. Put the cut-up fruit and juice in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower the heat, cover and simmer slowly, stirring occasionally, until the fruit is soft and the liquid has evaporated, about 12 minutes. If the liquid disappears before the fruit is soft, add a little more (the additional liquid can be water). Add the honey, jam and stir over low heat for about 3 minutes. Scrape the chunky jam into a bowl, add breadcrumbs and cool to room temperature. (Idea for the filling comes from Dorie Greenspan web site.)

Place a rack in a lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Have a 2-inch round cookie cutter at hand.

Divide dough into 3 equal parts. Work with one part and keep rest of the dough in refrigerator.
Pat the dough into a rough log, and roll it into rectangle 5-mm thick.
Dust both sides of the dough with flour, and starting with a shorter end, fold it in three like a business letter.
Flip the dough over, give it a 90° turn on your work surface, and roll it again into 5-mm thick rectangle. Repeat once more folding and rolling.

Cut out as many circles as you can. For each cookie, place a heaping teaspoonful of filling in the center of the dough. Lift two sides of the cookie and pinch together the point where they meet. Lift the remaining side – think of it as flap – and pinch together the points where it meets the other two sides of the dough; you’ll have a triangle with a mound of filling peeking above the dough – think Haman’s three-cornered hat. Reroll the scraps and repeat the process again.

Work with rest of the dough repeating the same process.


Bake the hamantaschen for 15 to 17 minutes, rotating the sheet after 8 minutes, or until the cookies are deep brown around the edges. Leave the cookies on the baking sheet for a couple of minutes and then carefully transfer them to a rack to rest until they are only just-warm or reach room temperature.
Dust with powdered sugar.

3 comments:

Paula Jacobson said...

You say to add the nuts to the filling, but there are no nuts in the ingredients list. There are bread crumbs in the list, but you never use them.

Unknown said...

How big should the circle cutter be?

Lois said...

Thanks for this, there are a bunch of prune haters around me so I'll try to convert them with this recipe