Hamantashen!

[rymenhild]

Yes, it's that time of year again - specifically, the Jewish holiday of Purim, in which we wear costumes, bake cookies, and get really drunk - , so I'm commandeering prosewitch's kitchen and her cooking expertise and preparing to make hamantashen.


2/3 cup shortening – margarine
½ cup sugar
1 egg
3 Tablespoons milk or water (can use non-dairy creamer, can dilute it if thick)
½ tsp vanilla
2 cups sifted flour (When tripling the recipe add 1 extra cup of flour-- 7 cups =2 lbs)

Cream shortening and sugar. Add egg and continue creaming till smooth. Add liquid and flavoring and stir in sifted flour till a ball of dough is formed. Chill 2-3 hours or overnight. Roll out on lightly floured board to 1/8 “ thickness. Cut into 2” rounds. Place ball of filling the size of a hazelnut in the center of the circles. Bring edges together to form a triangle, pinching the seams together from top down to corners. Bake on a well greased cookie sheet or line cookie sheet with parchment paper and bake until golden brown at 375o oven. Yields 48-60 cookies.

Fillings – can use pie fillings
Preserves- (¾ cup fruit preserves, 2 tablespoons dry cake or bread crumbs, dash grated lemon peel)
Chocolate chips
Nutella (hurrah, nutella!)

Triple recipe uses approximately 3 10 oz jars Bakers Choice fillings and less than one 21 oz cherry pie filling jar.

The only problem with the traditional family recipe is that the crust can sometimes be a bit dry. I'm wondering whether an egg-and-honey glaze would improve the texture. shirei_shibolim, could you give me the proportions for the glaze you put on challah?

By the way, if you're looking for the article on The Passion, I am about to post it under friendslock. It's publicly available on my other blog, but for various reasons I don't want to connect the two too easily. If you aren't on my friendslist or want to know where the other blog is, leave me a note and I'll let you know.

And does it strike anyone as odd that the LJ spell-checker doesn't know the word "blog"?

Comments

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

Something along the lines of one egg beaten and a tablespoon each of water and honey.

I've occasionally noted the bizarre gaps in LiveJournal's spell checker. Among them is the word "LiveJournal." Aside from the obvious suggestion to split it into two words, they suggest Lovingly, Longingly, and Laughingly as alternatives. Maybe they outsourced their dictionary assembly to someone at the Lifetime network.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Actually, I only checked the spellcheck for the sake of looking at bizarre gaps. It's so much fun.

Thanks for the egg info. Will try on hamantashen. :)