Hamentaschen for Purim!!

Happy Purim everybody!! This is a particularly upbeat Jewish holiday where we celebrate our escape from the clutches of a genocidal Persian guy named Hamen who wore a 3-cornered hat. I can't get into the whole thing now but basically, Hamen wanted to kill all the Jews, but Queen Esther saved us, so now we eat his hat. boo Hamen!!! On Purim you are pretty much commanded to get drunk and to share cookies with friends and loved ones and pretty much everybody really. Poppyseed fillings are most traditional; I made a tasty apricot one.



Hamentashen ("Hamen hats")

Ingredients

3/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar, white or light brown
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
3 tbs milk or orange juice (they're not kosher with milk)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/4 cups flour
apricot filling (recipe follows)

Directions

In a large bowl, cream the sugar and butter until smooth. Beat in the egg, then stir in the milk/juice and vanilla. Mix in the baking powder and salt, then gradually incorporate the flour til you get a big ball of dough. Wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight (you could probably get away with just a few hours).

Then, preheat the oven to 375. Roll out the dough to 1/4" thickness. Take a cookie cutter or just a thin-lipped cup and make circles. Place these on your cookie sheet and place a dollop of jam in the center of each. Pinch them together to form 3 corners. You can brush an egg wash on the dough if you're feeling fancy, but I skipped this on mine and they were still delicious (as my friend Molly said when I asked her whether we should've: "I have no regrets").

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, erring on the side of slightly undercooked, then let them cool and then get drunk and give them to all your friends. Yay cookies! Boo Hamen!!

Rolling out the dough with my fabulous silicone rolling pin:



Apricot Filling

Ingredients

A bunch of dried apricots (I don't know, maybe, 15-20?)
1/3 cup honey
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Directions

Cover your apricots in water and let them sit overnight. When they get all nice and bloated, puree them in a food processor, stirring in the honey and cinnamon. It makes a lovely and colorful filling for hamentaschen. As for what to do with the leftovers of this, I have no idea. My friend Daniel liked it over ice cream.

Molly:



These were surprisingly delicious (not to mention attractive) with chocolate gelato that Molly brought.

Lavender-Rosewater Cookies

Tonight, I undertook two excursions into previously-uncharted vegan-culinary territory: I made my own seitan (from the amazing VeganYumYum's recipe) and baked up a batch of lavender-rosewater sugar cookies. The seitan was great! It's slated to be the base of tomorrow night's dinner. The cookies were also a big hit, and I'll share that recipe here.

Vegan Lavender-Rosewater Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

1/2 + 1/3 cup white sugar
1 /2 cup (1 stick) margarine
1/4 cup soft silken-style tofu
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tsp. rosewater
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons dried culinary lavender
sugar for rolling cookies in (1/2 cup or so)

Directions:

Cream together sugar and margarine in large bowl. In a food processor, blend together tofu, rosewater and vanilla till smooth. Add to sugar-margarine mixture and mix well.

In a (well-cleaned!) coffee grinder, grind lavender into a powder. In a separate bowl, mix together ground lavender with other dry ingredients. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix well. Refrigerate dough for half an hour or so.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Remove the dough from the fridge and roll into walnut-sized balls. Roll the balls in the extra sugar till well-coated. Arrange on a cookie sheet, about 2 inches apart. Bake 15 minutes. Allow to cool slightly on cookie tray, then transfer to a wire rack. Enjoy!


Pictures are coming, I promise! My camera is in Chicago, but I'll get it back this weekend. In the meantime, I'll try to get some of my cookie-testers to comment about how good these lavender-rosewater ones taste and how pretty they look!

Earl Grey Sugar Cookies!

This post represents the figurative ribbon-cutting for our new recipe blog. To get things rolling, I'm going to post my newest invention: vegan Earl Grey sugar cookies. These totally delicious but, alas, slightly weird-looking. Since they are, after all, Earl Grey cookies, maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised that they turned out so...well...gray. After some initial trepidation vis-a-vis their stone-like appearance, however, my roommate couldn't stop scarfing these up. We agreed that they look like rocks because they rock.

Vegan Earl Grey Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:
1/2 cup vegan margarine (I use Earth Balance or Willow Run)
1/2 cup + 1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup soft silken-style tofu
zest of one lemon
zest of one small, smooth-skinned orange (I used a Temple orange)
a splash of soy milk (vanilla or plain)
4 tablespoons loose-leaf Earl Grey tea
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Extra sugar to roll the cookies in (1/2 cup or so)


Directions:
Put the lemon and orange zests in a food processor with a splash of soymilk. Process till the zest has been reduced to tiny bits. Add the tofu and vanilla extract and process till relatively smooth (you'll still see little pieces of zest).

In a large bowl, cream together room-temperature margarine and sugar. Add the tofu mixture and mix till incorporated.

Place 4 tablespoons of Earl Grey tea into a (well-cleaned!) coffee grinder and process till very finely ground. In a separate bowl, combine ground tea, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt. Mix well.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix well. Cover bowl and refrigerate for at least half an hour. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Remove the cookie dough from the fridge and roll into balls, using about one teaspoon of dough per ball. Roll the balls in sugar till coated and press them lightly onto a cookie sheet, leaving about 2 inches between them. Bake for 12-15 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly on cookie sheet. Remove carefully from cookie sheet with a spatula and transfer to wire rack.

These cookies will keep cooking as they cool, so don't worry if you eat one right off the baking sheet and it seems a little undercooked in the center. Once cool, these will be delicious, floral, perfumey, and elegantly gray and rock-like. All in all, a very sophisticated, grown-up cookie.


If you try these, let me know what you think. To come: finished-product pictures, my recipes for lemon-thyme and orange-cardamom cookies, plus more baking experiments involving lavender, rosewater, matcha powder...and maybe some weird extracts from this rad site! I definitely want the bergamot, but the question remains: will I be seduced by the jasmine, rose and lavender? Tune in next time for the resolution of this cliffhanger...