Will It Hamantaschen!!?
A thing nobody asked for in which I take a very strange mediocre cookie and add a bunch of random fillings...must watch to see the final results!
I’ll be frank in saying that I don’t personally love hamantaschen as a cookie. They are often dry and crumbly, and the filling to cookie ratio is usually off. It’s the kind of cookie where I’m almost guaranteed to accidentally inhale some down the wrong pipe. Choking on a cookie feels downright belittling, and also sounds like a Seinfeld episode.
Plus, to quote my good friend, Ari Miller, who also wrote about the Jewish holiday of Purim in his newsletter this week (if you are not already a subscriber to silk chili bowties, what you are you waiting for?), “My favorite thing the Jews ever did was make a cookie in honor of a genocidal maniac.”
Purim is a Jewish holiday commemorating the saving of the Jewish people by a WOMAN after an evil advisor to the king named Haman (hence the cookie) tried to kill all the Jews (again) and it didn’t work (again) and so now we dress up in costumes (haha?) and eat cookies in triangular shapes in order to signify either his ear (according to the common Israeli interpretation) or his hat (according to the diaspora’s interpretation). And if you are thinking that it sounds like a very odd holiday, then you would be totally and exactly correct! But, then again some of you out there have a holiday coming up about a dead Jewish guy resurrecting so you eat chocolate bunnies and wear pastel colors - and that makes about as much sense to me as this does.
…so let’s eat cookies and dye eggs like god intended I guess?
While traditional hamantaschen are often too dry or crumbly for me, there are buttery versions that I think are better and more forgiving. Crucially, the most important detail though is the filling. Typical ones include: prune, poppyseed, jam of any sort, and chocolate. But nobody said you can’t freak with tradition, did they?
Today, I decided to whip up a batch hamantaschen based on the recipe from Breads Bakery (the best recipe I’ve found to date), with the addition of orange zest and just a whisper of almond extract as my base dough. I also used some killer good quality Sonora flour from Tehachapi Grain Project and filled these little triangles babies with so many combinations that I literally couldn’t remember what I made when I filmed this just 30 minutes later. Some were delish and surprising while others fell terribly flat.
You’ll have to watch the video below to find out our top 3!!
Think of it as a Purim Mukbang (possibly the first of it’s kind!), and I have a terrible cold, so I sound extremely stuffed up. You’re welcome.
I'm Ari Miller and I endorse this Substack.