Haman's Ears

Hamentaschen are the traditional cookie eaten at Purim, the best religious holiday ever for the following reasons:

1. It honors a woman, Esther.
2. You make a lot of noise.
3. You eat these cookies.
4. You dress up.
5. You are required to get drunk.

We hosted a Purim party and I think it was at least 50 percent motivated by the fact that we'd get to make cookies for it. I looked online for recipes and a standard complaint about Hamentaschen is that they are too dry. I also noticed that many of the recipes didn't have any butter in the dough. Cookies without butter being too dry? IMPOSSIBLE.

So I got this recipe from Gale Gand, who I was unfamiliar with but who hosts a show called "Sweet Treats" or something. This recipe has an apricot filling, but the filling for Hamentaschen is traditionally: 1) Poppy or 2) Prune. First, both Poppy and Prune seemed a little gross to me and second this apricot concoction in the recipe was a little too involved. So we improvised an Frankie and I used raspberry jam, apricot preserves and semi-sweet chocolate chips for the filling, all of which were very successful and delicious.

Other notes:
1) These are supposed to be triangular, so just think about triangle pockets when you're pinching the cookie into shape. Making little flats circular dough into triangles was totally blowing my mind.

2) The orange zest was VERY prominent in the cookie. It was good, but I would maybe use less next time.

Recipe for dough as follows:

2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup cold unsalted butter
2/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 egg white
1/2 orange, zest grated
Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a food processor. Add the butter and pulse. In a small bowl, mix together the sugar, egg, egg white, and orange zest. Add it to the processor and pulse to mix, being careful not to over mix. Divide into 2 disks and chill 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Roll out the dough on a floured work surface to 1/4-inch thick. Cut out 2 1/2 to 3-inch disks. (You can re-roll the scrapes to make more disks.) Place a disk of dough down and place 1 teaspoon of filling in the center. Pinch the disk in 3 places to form a triangular shape with the filling still showing in the center. They will look like 3 cornered hats. Place 2 inches apart on baking sheets. Continue until all the disks are made.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes.