A traditional recipe for a traditional cookie, but don’t worry, it’s really easy to make and really delicious.
Editor’s Note: With all the gourmet options available, it’s always great to share a classic hamantashen recipe; the real deal, the way Bubbie made them. If you want to add some gourmet touches you can add dry spices or citrus zest (about 1 teaspoon) into the dough for an extra pop of flavor.
Hamantaschen with Easy Poppy Seed Filling
Servings
36 Servings
Ingredients
- 3½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ cup finely ground almonds
- 9 ounces butter
- 1 cup confectioner’s sugar
- 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- Pinch salt
- 300 grams ground poppy seeds approx. 2⅓ cups
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1½ cups milk or orange juice
- 3 tablespoons honey
- Lemon zest optional
Instructions
- Sift flour and almonds.
- Beat butter with confectioner’s sugar and granulated sugar.
- Add eggs to the butter.
- Add the sifted flour and almonds, baking powder, and salt to the butter. Mix until dough is formed.
- Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least an hour.
- In a medium saucepan over medium heat, cook milk, sugar, and poppy seeds for 15 minutes.
- Add the honey and lemon zest and cook 5 minutes more. Let cool.
- Roll out the dough thinly and create circles.
- Put about 1/2 teaspoon of filling in the middle of each circle. Fold up dough into a triangle and pinch the edges.
- Bake about 10 minutes in 375℉ (190°C) oven until golden.
Very tasty. The poppy seed filling was great. I added the juice of one lemon in addition to the orange and lemon zest. Needed all of the 1 1/2 cups of milk and it easily cooked down. The dough was dense so difficult to roll out. I barely eked out 26 cookies, have lots of poppy seed filling left over. Will definitely make again, but this time roll the dough out thinner. And maybe cut the poppy seed recipe in half. Thank you Jamie. Hag Sameach
These are absolutely fantastic, the best Hamantaschens I’ve ever made–or even ever HAD to be honest. That said, I made a few variations that I think I would recommend:
1. Substitute more ground almond (double it?) for flour, and don’t grind them too much: having the crunch texture/aesthetics of almond bits in the dough is fantastic
2. Maybe even do a bit less flour, like closer to 3 cups. I found the dough pretty difficult to work with with 3.5 cups (cracks a little bit when folding)
3. Prepare to grind the poppy seeds yourself! I couldn’t buy them pre-ground, so I had to do it myself. Either you’ll need to soak them for 3 hours in advance, or I used an electric coffee grinder (the Cuisinart food processor did not work). I’d recommend the coffee grinder method, made it pretty easy.
4. Use Milk, rather than orange juice, and then use zest from an orange. I used zest from one orange, and one lemon and it was perfect (not too intense, but a nice tangy bright citrusy flavor). Also I would go less on the milk, maybe 1 cup instead of 1.5 cups, since it takes way longer than 15 minutes to cook it down enough to work with it (otherwise your filling is too liquid-y)
5. I’m not sure how many cookies this recipe was intended for (i.e. how thick you should roll the dough and how big of circles to use), but I went for the classic Jewish bakery size and rolled the dough to about 4mm thick and used a large Mason Jar lid (~3-4in diameter) as my cookie cutter. This yielded 34 cookies, and in my opinion they came out perfect (thick buttery crust and a tablespoon of filling in each cookie. That said I ended with a few cookies worth of extra filling.
6. This may be because my dough was thicker/cookies were larger, but I cooked mine at 420 degrees F for about 12 minutes. Basically once the corners start to become medium-dark brown, the bottoms are a perfect golden color and the tops are still light colored and almond-y. I think I nailed this part given my cookie size.
Good Luck!
Is the baking temperature 375F or 180C? 375F = 190C and 180C = 350F – these could have big implications in the final results!
Good question, it should be 375/190
These turned out dry and sad. Would not do again.