Uses For Leftover Hamantashen Filling

You have been diligently preparing for Purim making many Hamantashen with many different fillings. Your Shalach Manos baskets need to be filled with assorted treats and your Hamantashen are anticipated additions in your baskets.

Most religious institutions, when preparing for Purim festivities, enlist cadres of cooks to assemble scores of dozens of Hamantashen for their holiday carnivals. Along with the traditional prune (lekvar) and poppy seed (mohn) fillings, apricot, almond, chocolate, strawberry and other fruit flavors have become favorites.  When preparing hundreds or even thousands of Hamantashen at a time, bakers can easily use many different flavors and have no leftovers.

However, when baking in your own home, the multitude of flavors can cause a problem. Even if you narrow your family’s choices down to three or four, and you make dozens of Hamantashen, you will still find yourself left with half a can of one flavor and some of another.

This has been my experience more than I care to remember. So what was I to do? I knew that the fillings shouldn’t be left in the can because the acid in the fillings would react with the metal can and negatively change their taste. The leftovers could be stored in the refrigerator for a few days in plastic or glass containers but eventually I needed to find a use for them and making more Hamantashen wasn’t the answer!

The following recipes use four different fillings to make two different cakes.  One cake is poppy seed (mohn)/almond in a dairy pound cake and the other uses leftover prune and apricot filling to make a chocolate cake that is not only pareve, it is also fat-free.  Since most prepared fillings for cookies or pies are pareve you can interchange the flavors for either cake. However, I would not suggest prune filling for the butter/yogurt cake since it would alter its golden color.

These recipes are designed to be used with commercial fillings not jelly or jam as they contain less binding agents and more moisture than fillings and will alter the consistency and flavor of the cakes.  In general, I also recommend that jelly or jam never be used to fill Hamantashen as they melt when the cookies are baked and often cause the sealed sides of the dough pockets to open.

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Eat in Good Health!