hamentaschen

I made some hamentaschen as my contribution to a dinner party at the neighbor's place. Never done that before; definitely qualified as a learning experience, and I can honestly say that my cookie/biscuit knowledge has increased as a result.

Chow.com had a recipe for nutella hamentaschen. I'm partial to the poppy ones, myself, but I had a jar of nutella sitting around and thought this might be a good use for it - it's a more lofty-sounding goal than "eating the nutella with a spoon".  I didn't have any margarine, so instead of going with that recipe, I used this one, with a slight change.


Yields: depends on how big the circles are. I got about 20, minus dough snitching.

• 225 g butter
• 110 g sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp. Vanilla, 1 tsp almond extract
• 500 g flour
• 4 tsp. baking powder

Cream butter, sugar, and eggs together. Add in vanilla and almond. Sift flour and baking powder, add to wet ingredients, working in thoroughly. Roll out, add filling and bake in preheated oven at 190C until sides are starting to brown.

chopping the almonds

...and the apricots

dough's looking pretty good here

first one! 

Nutella rolled in almonds - what's not to like?

Initial efforts - note the overfilled apricot one on the upper left

Uhoh. Some slumping has occured.

why aren't they triangles?

Alright! What did we learn? Well, chilled dough is really important to ensuring that the hamentaschen don't slump out of their triangular shape; a coffee cup works well as an ersatz cookie cutter; a wine bottle  makes a half-decent rolling pin; and folding the rounds into triangles, with the sides overlapping rather than pinched, is key.

The fillings were: Nutella rolled in almonds, and apricots with plum jam. In doing a bit of research on hamentaschen techniques, one thing that came up was the tendency of some fillings - just jam, for example - to totally liquefy and run out of the triangle. I thought adding chopped apricots to some plum jam would be a good consistency and thick enough to stay in the cookie. That turned out well; about two tablespoons of jam to the quantity of apricots above worked a treat.

Rolling the nutella in almonds was slightly more tricky; again, if the nutella had been cold it probably would have gone better. 

Putting the hamentaschen onto the warm cookie sheet as I prepped them wasn't a great idea, as the dough heated up the butter melted and exacerbated the slumping that you see above. after that batch i started putting them in the fridge while they waited, and re-chilled the dough that was waiting to be rolled out. 

There's a sweet spot between dough thickness and the diameter of the circle involved; my guesstimate is that I was somewhere around .50 to .75 cm, cutting the rounds with a coffee cup.

For next time: 

• less flavoring in the dough - the second tsp of flavoring was unnecessary; i'll omit the almond.
• might actually substitute some margarine for butter, as that would create less spreading.
• additional kinds of filling, maybe try my hand at poppy?
• multiple cookie sheets.

Also: found these tips about cookie baking:

"How do you combine it all to come up with your favorite winning texture? The tips below will help you achieve the cookie you desire.

Flat
If you want your cookies on the flat side, you can do some or all of the following things: Use all butter, use all-purpose flour or bread flour, increase the sugar content slightly, add a bit of liquid to your dough, and or bring the dough to room temperature before baking.
Puffy
If you like your cookies light and puffy, try some of the following tricks. Use shortening or margarine and cut back on the fat, add an egg, cut back on the sugar, use cake flour or pastry flour, use baking powder instead of baking soda, refrigerate your dough before baking.
Chewy
If chewiness is your desire remove the cookies a few minutes before they are done, while their centers are still soft and not quite cooked through. The edges should be slightly golden but the middle will still look slightly raw. Use brown sugar or honey as a sweetener. Try using egg yolks instead of whole eggs. This will add some extra moistness to the cookies thus helping to be a bit more on the chewy side.
Crispy
For crisp and crunchy cookies, bake your cookies a few minutes longer than suggested and immediately remove them to a wire rack to cool. Cookies made with all butter and high amounts of white sugar will also crisp quite nicely. Another trick is to use bread flour.
Common Cookie Problems

Cookies brown too quickly – the oven is too hot or baking pans are a dark color. Try baking at a lower temperature, longer or use heavy gauge aluminum baking sheets.
Bottom of cookies brown too quickly – same as above, or the oven rack is too low, or too much sugar is in the cookies.
Top of cookies brown too quickly and bottoms are not cooked– the rack is too high in the oven
Cookies spread too much – the dough is too soft - refrigerate for 15 minutes; warm baking sheets were used; too much butter, oil, or margarine was used – try using a 50/50 mix of shortening and butter.
Cookies do not bake evenly – your cookie sheet may be warped or the temperature throughout the oven is not even."