Great-Grandma Jennie’s Hamantaschen
August 12, 2017 | By Jeremy Scheck | 12 Comments
Named after Haman, the antagonist of the Purim story, these triangular cookies are shaped like his infamous hat. If you’ve tried a hamantasch at a deli, it was probably dry, crumbly, and not worth the calories. This recipe comes all the way from my Great–Grandma Jennie, the mother of my Grandma Karen, who sparked my interest in baking. This cookie is crisp on the outside and tender in the middle. You can fill them with jam, nutella, apple filling, or the traditional prune filling (bleh!). This recipe is fairly large and makes enough for family and friends.
ingredients 
creaming butter + sugar 
mixing 
eggs one at a time 
cream with eggs 
scape down as needed 
aerate dry ingredients 
scape down as needed 
place on plastic wrap 
chill
rolling out the dough 
cutting out the shapes 
shaping 
filling with jam 
rolling out 
hamantaschen
Great-Grandma Jennie's Hamantaschen
Ingredients
For the dough
- 1 cup / 2 sticks (226g) unsalted butter at room temperature
- 1–1/2 cups (300g) granulated sugar
- 3 eggs
- 5–1/2 cups (685g) all purpose flour
- 1 tsp coarse salt (such as kosher)
- 2–1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup (120ml) orange juice
Filling options
- Good quality jam (I like apricot or raspberry)
- Homemade Apple Pie Filling (make it in 5 minutes by sautéeing a diced apple with 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 stick of butter, and 1 tsp cinnamon)
- Nutella
- Prune Levkar (Mix 1 jar with the juice of 1/2 a lemon, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp honey)
Egg wash ingredients
- 1 egg white whisked lightly with 2 tsp granulated sugar
Instructions
Making the dough:
- Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl of a stand mixer on medium high speed until it is light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time, beating well and scraping after each incorporation.
- Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a separate, large bowl.
- Add half the flour mixture to the butter and sugar mixture, and mix on low speed to combine.
- Add in the orange juice and vanilla on low speed.
- Add in the remaining flour mixture and mix on low speed to combine.
- Divide the dough in two and wrap in plastic wrap.
- Freeze for 30 minutes or refrigerate for several hours.
Shaping:
- Preheat the oven to 375° F.
- Roll out a quarter of the dough between two sheets of wax paper to between 1/8" and 1/4" (this method works by far the best).
- Use an upside-down cup to cut circles out of the dough.
- If any point the dough becomes too soft to easily work with, return to the freezer for 5 minutes.
- Lift the circles carefully onto a silpat or baking paper–lined cookie sheet.
- Depending on the size of your circles, spoon between 1/2 tsp and 1 tsp of filling in the center of each circle.
- Fold three sides of the circle in to make a triangle shape, and pinch the edges.
- Freeze the shaped hamentaschen 10 minutes before baking (this helps them keep their shape).
- Re-roll scraps and repeat to make more.
- Any left over dough can be frozen for several months.
Baking and final assembly:
- Bake one tray at a time for 15 minutes at 375° F.
- After 15 minutes, remove the tray from the oven and brush each cookie with the egg wash.
- Return to the oven for 5 minutes, or until the cookies are lightly golden-brown.
- Let cool on a wire rack.
Jeremy Scheck spent high school perfecting his signature cupcakes, making quiches and coffee cake by the dozen at a local bakery, and teaching cooking demonstrations at Williams-Sonoma. As a 10th grader in 2016, he began documenting his favorite recipes on a blog called The After School Bakery. In college, Jeremy learned to make 50 gallons of ice cream in the food science lab, how to prune grape vines in the teaching vineyard, the best way to milk a cow in Northern Italy, and why film photography is an art worth saving. As a sophomore in 2020, he traded blog photos for video and became a TikTok culinary sensation. Jeremy has been featured on the Today show, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, BBC Radio, People, and Access Hollywood, among others. Jeremy is a graduate of Cornell University with a double major in Spanish and Italian, and significant coursework in food science. He lives in Brooklyn, NY. Learn more about Jeremy.
What? No poppy filling! It’s my favorite!!
Made them today with blueberry, fig and roses jam and they all tasted amazing! Highly recommend freezing the shaped Hamantaschen as my first batch’s shap wasn’t the greatest cause I didn’t freeze them long enough. Will for sure be making them again 👍🏻
Can you make this without a stand mixer or hand mixer? How would you modify it?
I neverrrr bake like this. I find recipes so hard or with to many ingredients I don’t have. This was nothing like I have experienced. Seeing the TikTok was inspiring. How could I not trust him!? All the ingredients were things I had. It was all easy to follow. Keep up the amazing.
This was so yum
I am so glad to hear that you enjoyed it!
Made em, loved em. Hard to make em look super pretty but came out tasting and feeling perfect!
Raspberry, chocolate, apricot, cherry, and my personal favourite, lekvar.
Debuting this year: lemon curd.
I made these for my family and they were delicious! Best hamantaschen I’ve ever tasted. Using wax paper to roll out the dough was super helpful.
I made these with a hand mixer (no stand mixer) and they turned out great! The recipe makes a ton – 65 in my case. I found they baked a little quicker than the recipe said (my oven was on convection) so I brushed them with egg wash at 13 minutes and then gave them 3 more minutes. A couple tips: refrigerate frequently between steps (after rolling out, after cutting out circles), use less filling than you think – I found they were prone to bursting with jam when overfilled,
What else can you do with this dough if you have leftovers but don’t want to make another batch of hamantaschen?
These came out great! A little trouble with the first batch keeping their shape but a little reshaping during the second batch helped. All were delicious! We did apricot and raspberry.
Is the egg wash necessary? I think I used this recipe last year but I don’t know if I brushed them or just let them brown a bit….