Haman has got nothing on Hamentashen

I know that my mother has been trying to get me to make this particular cookie treat for a while now. She remembers them from her days in Winnipeg, where she, an "island princess", was exposed to Jewish cookery by her landlord. Not only does she now exclaim "oy vey iz mir" whenever she gets irritated with us children, she also has a predilection for hamentashen, rugelach and chocolate babka (although the latter was probably more due to Zabar's than Winnipeg).

So when my friend Susan told me she was making some Hamentashen for Purim, she also told me I should give it a go.

So, of course I turned to my favorite baking blog - SmittenKitchen for the recipe.

Of course, instead of adding orange zest (which is what her recipe calls for) I added lemon zest because it's what I had on hand. Citrus is citrus and lemon works just as well a orange in this case.



Well, I was able to get the dough to the right consistency and I used a 3-inch cookie cutter instead of her suggested 2-inch, mainly because I wanted a bigger cookie and in the SmittenKitchen blog, she mentioned that one needed to pinch the walls really tight in order to create a proper seal. So, I thought more dough would mean less leakage.



How wrong I was. Even with my careful filling of the preserves (I used apricot, strawberry and blackberry preserves) and my solid pinching...



I still ended up with little random shaped oblong cookies with preserves all over the place.



Moral of the story of Hamentashen, lots of dough doesn't mean that your filling wont leak. I think maybe next time, I'll do a half shortening half butter dough and maybe use an egg wash to seal those pesky corners!

Still, they tasted good with tea!