Gluten-Free Hamantaschen

Yesterday was the Jewish holiday of Purim. Maybe you’ve heard the saying about Jewish holidays — they have a theme: “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat!” Well, if ever a holiday really deserved that description, it’s Purim. This holiday is based on the Book of Esther (and if you don’t know the story, you can find a pretty good synopsis on Wikipedia).

The traditional Purim food is a pastry called Hamantaschen. It’s triangular, because the villain, Haman, purportedly wore a triangular hat. So we get to eat his hat. Oy vay.

Anyway, there are basically two kinds of Hamantaschen. The kind I grew up with is made with a sweet yeast dough and the traditional fillings are poppy seed, prune paste, apricot, cherry, and sometimes sweet cheese (like a cheese Danish). The more modern Hamantaschen have a cookie type dough and are typically filled with strawberry or grape jam, or chocolate chips.

Anyway, I tried my hand at a sweet eggy yeast dough, and it turned out pretty darn good. My batch of dough made 18 nice big pastries, about 6″ on a side. I did 6 each of poppy seed, apricot, and cherry, and I took some pictures for you!

Yummy... my non-GF spouse gobbled two of them!

1. Al Bogdan Says:
   June 20th, 2010 at 6:46 pm

   I miss Hamantaschen! I tried making some, but didn’t like how the dough turned out — a little too hard. These look yummy!