Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
2 eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon orange extract
orange jam/marmalade (I used Seville Orange Fiordifrutta)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, beat together the butter, sugar, extract and egg. Add the remaining dry ingredients. Mix until smooth.
Roll the dough out onto a clean, floured surface. When the dough is about a 1/4 inch thick, cut 2 1/2-3 inch circles out of the dough using a cookie, biscuit or doughnut cutter. Place them on the prepared pans.
Spoon some jam into the middle of each circle. Fold three sides towards the center and press down to form a triangle.
Bake 12 minutes or until golden. Cool on a wire rack.
Yield: about 3 dozen cookies
My thoughts:
Happy Purim! Any holiday where you have an excuse to make cookies is a good one to me!
I love hamantaschen and the story behind why we make these cookies this time of year. I wrote an article about Purim and hamantaschen for NPR a while back and since then, I’ve created recipes for a rugelach-inspired cream cheese based hamantaschen, chocolate hamantaschen, pareve/vegan hamantaschen filled with kiwi jam, orange ginger hamantaschen, and pareve/vegan fig-orange hamantaschen spiked with butternut squash. As you can tell, I really like the favor of orange in my hamantaschen! It is one of the few fruits that are in season this year and although this recipe uses extract and jam, it is a flavor that really fits into this time of year. Plus orange juice is a common addition to hamantaschen that do not use butter (some people who keep kosher prefer a butter-less pareve/vegan version) so this gives you that flavor but also the richness of butter. Since we do not keep kosher, using butter isn’t a concern.
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