Hamantashen

It's Purim and time to make the hamantashen, filled cookies designed to symbolize the defeat of Haman, an enemy of the Jewish people. They appear in bakery cases all over NYC this time of year, and are beloved by tribe members and others. And homemade ones abound -- people who rarely bake the rest of the year are known for making these triangular treats.

So I made them, using a c. 1960s recipe in the Temple Israel (of Akron) Synagogue Sisterhood Cook Book. 

Dear readers, I will probably never make them again. The dough was difficult to work with and the process was rather tedious. Everyone who tried them loved the cookies, though, so there was that. And the dough is rich and delicious.

So for those of you interested, hang on to your three-pointed hats and let's get started. Place all the ingredients in a large bowl. I misread the instructions and did not beat the egg yolks with the sour cream first, but it didn't seem to matter in the end. And I saved a step.

Mix until it forms a dough.

Form the dough into a couple of spheres and refrigerate until firm, usually an hour or two.

Roll out on parchment paper or a lightly floured surface. I sandwiched the dough between to sheets of parchment. Using a 2.5 or 3-inch cookie cutter, make the circles.  At this point, I refrigerated the sheets of cutouts to firm up again.

There are many fillings for these cookies. I used prune lekvar because I happened to see it while shopping at Pomegranate, an upscale Kosher restaurant in Brooklyn.

Place a teaspoon, or less, of filling in the center of each cookie.

There are many ways to create the triangle shape. At first, I used the old-fashioned one, below, of pinching the sides together.

Brush the formed cookies with egg white before baking.

But my first batch was a fail. See how many opened up?

But then I discovered a webpage on how to make them perfect. You can see it here. In the tutorial, Tori Avery demonstrates a folding technique. You can see how much better my second batch looked following those instructions.  (There was no third batch, as I ate the dough raw for dinner!)

Production notes: I halved this recipe, using only butter and not Crisco, and followed it exactly save for mixing the sour cream and egg yolks together first. I brushed the tops with egg white before baking. Each batch took about 12 to 15 minutes. (Eleanor Applebaum was the rabbi's wife at Temple Israel, and an editor of this cookbook.)

Irish "No Soda" Bread

Tis the season for all sorts of cultural and holiday-based baked goods and, not being a fan of hamantaschen, I decided to go Irish and bake what I thought was soda bread.  (I'm actually not that fond of soda bread either, but it was the lesser, and simpler to prepare, of two evils average baked goods.  Plus, the grass is always greener, and having grown up with the Purim treats, thought I'd expand my horizons.)

The recipe, titled Irish Bread, is from an amazing collection I bought on eBay, filled with hundreds of recipes.  I didn't realize it wasn't soda bread until today while doing some research and realized  -- duh -- this bread has no baking soda, just baking powder. 

Irish soda bread (and this version) is a quick bread, i.e., it doesn't rely on yeast and hence, you don't need to wait for the dough to rise.  Just mix the ingredients (pictured above) together and pop it in the oven.

The recipe calls for the bread to be baked in an iron frying pan, but having none, I simply put it in a 10" stainless steel frying pan (a round cake pan would have been fine, too) and popped it in the oven.  It also says to "work in" the butter which I realized probably means to cut in cold butter, as one would do for pie crust.  But my realization came only after I added warm, softened butter to the mixture. It was fine.  I also didn't see the currant ingredient until the bread was well underway, so I just doubled the amount of raisins.  Again, it was fine.  (This is one case where baking, thankfully,  is not a science.)

The verdict?  It's good, but not great.  When a baked good is "saved" by caraway seeds and raisins, you know it's not  going to make it into my repertoire. But since it wasn't a total disaster, I thought I'd write about it.  Next time, though, I will pay closer attention to the recipe.  And maybe bake some hamentaschen.