April Cook the Book / Mile End Hamantaschen / Posted by J.K.

I chose Hamantaschen from The Mile End Cookbook because I love Hamentaschen and I had lekvar (prune) and mohn (poppy seed) filling left over from Purim. That left the apricot filling to make with Mile End's recipe.

This is an easy recipe. Apricots, sugar and water. 

First, I chopped my apricots. This makes it easier to mash them after they're cooked.

 Add the water. 

 And simmer for five minutes.  

 The recipe calls for a food processor, but I used my trusty immersion blender. Much easier. I have a Vitamix, too, but scraping sticky substances out of the bottom is too much work. Cleaning the Vitamix isn't work, though. Pour in some hot water, add a couple of drops of dish detergent, turn it on, and it cleans itself.

 Now for the dough. Mile End's recipe is almost identical to my usual recipe, which was given to me by my childhood friend. (Mile End uses 1/3 the baking powder.) Before that, I used a recipe from the Presto flour company that used their self-rising cake flour, which I had to carry back from New York, because self-rising cake flour isn't sold in California.

Not too many ingredients here, either

Beat the eggs, sugar and oil until thick. Add the blended dry ingredients and beat until mixed. The cookbook says to use your hands, but I used my silicone paddle, which scrapes the bowl as it works, and is gentle enough to fold egg whites.

You will probably need to add more flour. I added an extra cup, until the dough looked like this.

 Form the dough into a disk and refrigerate.

 Wrap it well. Again, the book said in aluminum foil, but plastic wrap is much easier to work with.

 When the dough is chilled, break off pieces and roll between your hands to the approximate size of ping pong balls.

 Then flatten, with a tortilla press or rolling pin.

 This dough is very sticky, so keep the bulk of it in the fridge, and coat the bottom of each disk with sugar so it won't stick. The prune and poppy seed filling are both very dark, so I like to use a crinkled edge on one to let everyone easily tell the difference.

  

Place your filling in the center of the disk, fold up into a triangle and pinch points together. You won't have any trouble getting the edges to stick together.

  

Baked Hamantaschen

This process was way too slow for me, so I rolled the rest of the dough.

Assembly, of course, is the same.

 

More Baked Hamantaschen