Hamantaschen II
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I almost didn’t write this post because my Hamantaschen are so ugly. 
In fact, they’re even uglier than last year’s which I didn’t think was possible. And you wouldn’t know it from looking at my photos, but Hamantaschen are triangular shaped cookies, representative of Purim‘s villain Haman’s triangular ears/pocket/hat depending on whom you ask. I think in Hebrew school we learned it was either Haman’s hat (remember the song?) or ears, but really–triangular ears?
Anyway, Hamantaschen are soft cookies, traditionally with a poppy seed filling, but we grew up eating apricot ones, hence my apricot filling. I used the same apricot filling recipe (yum!) from last year but decided to give this new dough recipe a shot, and it’s good! However, I ran into one weird problem–I baked some on parchment and some on Silpats. The ones on parchment tended to open more and the ones on Silpats stayed sealed. Weird, huh?
Ingredients
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter or margarine
1 1/4 cups sugar + a pinch for the egg wash
3 eggs + 1 for the egg wash
1/4 cup orange juice or milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Approximately 4 to 4 1/2 cups of flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
Fruit preserves. (Not jam.) You can also use Nutella.
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
In a mixing bowl, cream the shortening, butter and sugar together. Add the eggs and blend until smooth. If the mixture is too hard to blend or seems curdled, add about 1 tbs of flour to bind it.
Stir in the orange juice or milk and the vanilla. Fold in 4 cups of flour, salt and baking powder. Mix to make a firm but soft dough. Cover and let the dough rest for 10 minutes to give the flour time to absorb all the moisture. If the dough is too sticky to handle after ten minutes have passed, add extra flour up to 1/2 cup. The dough will be sticky when it’s ready, but you should be able to handle it without it getting stuck to your fingers.
Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Divide the dough into 2 or 3 flattened discs and work with one portion at a time. Roll out the dough onto a lightly floured board to a thickness of 1/8 inch. Use a 3-inch cookie or biscuit cutter and cut as many rounds as you can.
In a small bowl mix 1 egg, 1 tablespoon of water and a pinch of sugar to make an egg glaze. Brush the rounds with the wash, then fill each with a generous 1/2 teaspoonful of your desired filling. Fold 3 sides of each circle together, creating triangles. I like to leave a little space in the center so you can see what the filling is (plus it looks pretty), but you can also seal your hamantaschen completely.
Brush the cookies with additional egg wash. If desired, sprinkle with regular or coarse sugar, and bake in the center of the preheated oven until golden brown, 18 to 25 minutes. Cool on the baking sheets.
Tips
Bake your hamantaschen in the upper third of the oven – usually the bottom part of the oven is too hot and may also cause premature bottom-browning. If you want to use leftover scraps to make more cookies, only roll them out once more because a lean dough like this one can only be rolled a couple times before becoming really tough.
This dough can be frozen for about 2 months or refrigerated (wrapped well in plastic) for one to three days. Just give it time to warm up before rolling it out. You can also freeze or refrigerate the filled triangles before baking. If you do this, just bake them without defrosting.
More photos here.
My notes
- I used orange juice rather than milk.
- I skipped the egg wash.
- Mine baked in about 15 minutes.
- I used a regular old glass rather than a cookie cutter and got about four dozen cookies.
Recipe from A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking by Marcy Goldman via Baking and Books.
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In other news, what do you think of the site redesign? The amazingly talented Maria designed the header image and I think it’s just adorable!
Please bear with me as I work out the kinks of the new template and let me know if you notice anything funky. I’m currently trying to figure out why the live comment preview works in IE but not Firefox, so if you’re familiar with WordPress, now would be a great time to show off your expertise!
Happy Valentine’s Day
I know, I’m a little early with the valentine cookies. But since I have no valentine this year (waah), I made cookies to share with my coworkers. And trust me when I say they’re not complaining they get to start stuffing their bellies a day early.
I used my favorite sugar cookie and powdered sugar glaze recipes. Also, notice the cute X and O cookie cutters? I was cleaning out my cupboards and came across them–they were a gift from my mom last year which I almost forgot about! Unfortunately, I couldn’t do too many Xs and Os because they are huge and I would have ended up with only about a dozen cookies.
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And finally, totally unrelated, but if you got here via an article in your local newspaper (hi Judi, I tried to email you but it was returned), would you please send me a link or tell me the name of the paper?
Snickery Squares
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I suppose I should preface this by saying that this recipe reminded me that while I love caramel, I’m just not a fan of dulce de leche. I know, I know, the pictures look amazing (well, not my photography, but the actual end product). Delicious shortbread, gooey goodness, caramelized nuts, and chocolate all together, the perfect combination! Alas, I’m just not into it. I can’t help but to think dulce de leche is just missing something. Or maybe I’m just used to Snickers bars and their thick, almost too sweet, caramel. Sigh.
(Yes, this was a long process.)
But instead of talking about what I didn’t like, let me tell you about what I did like. The shortbread is a perfect base, and a recipe I know I will use again. The peanuts were my first foray into caramelizing nuts, and while it was stressful (flashbacks of my disastrous peanut brittle/hot sugar blister incident came to mind), it was well worth it. I’ve worked with enough hot sugar now to know a) wear long sleeves, b) use a long spoon/silicone spatula, and c) not dip my finger in a tiny glob of yummy looking caramel that hasn’t yet cooled completely. Come on, like you’ve never done that. Or uh, thought about it.
Anyway, back to the squares. While they’re not my all time favorite, they’re good–thick, oozing of dulce de leche, and not sickeningly sweet. The true test of course, is how long these remain on the counter at my office tomorrow. I’m guessing they’ll be gone well before lunch.
Ingredients
For the Crust
1 cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup sugar
2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and chilled
1 large egg yolk, lightly beaten
For the topping
7 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
½ stick (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces, at room temperature
For the filling
1/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons water
1 ½ cups salted peanuts
about 1 ½ cups store-bought dulce de leche
Preparation
Getting Ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter an 8-inch square pan and put it on a baking sheet.
To make the crust: Toss the flour, sugar, confectioners’ sugar and salt into a food processor and pulse a few times to combine. Toss in the pieces of cold butter and pulse about 12 times, until the mixture looks like coarse meal. Pour the yolk over the ingredients and pulse until the dough forms clumps and curds – stop before the dough comes together in a ball.
Turn the dough into the buttered pan and gently press it evenly across the bottom of the pan. Prick the dough all over with a fork and slide the sheet into the oven.
Bake the crust for 15 to 20 minutes, or until it takes on just a little color around the edges. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool to room temperature before filling.
To make the filling: Have a parchment – or, better yet, a silicone mat-lined baking sheet at the ready, as well as a long-handled wooden spoon (you’ll be cooking sugar that will climb to over 300 degrees F, so you’ll want to keep as far away from it as possible) and a medium (about 2-quart) heavy-bottomed sauce pan.
Put the sugar and water in the saucepan and cook over medium-high heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Keeping the heat fairly high, continue to cook the sugar, without stirring, until it just starts to color. (If sugar splatters onto the sides of the saucepan, wash down the splatters with a pastry brush dipped in cold water.) Toss in the peanuts and immediately start stirring. Keep stirring, to coat the peanuts with the sugar. Within a few minutes, they will be covered with sugar and turn white – keep stirring until the sugar turns back into caramel. When the peanuts are coated with a nice deep amber caramel, remove the pan from the heat and turn the nuts out onto the baking sheet, using the wooden spoon to spread them out as best you can. Cool the nuts to room temperature.
When they are cool enough to handle, separate the nuts or break them into small pieces. Divide the nuts in half. Keep half of the nuts whole or in biggish pieces for the filling, and finely chop the other half for the topping.
Spread the dulce de leche over the shortbread base and sprinkle over the whole candied nuts or the big pieces.
To make the topping: Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water or in a microwave oven, using a low power setting. Remove the chocolate from the heat and gently stir in the butter, stirring until it is fully blended into the chocolate.
Pour the chocolate over the dulce de leche, smoothing it with a long metal icing spatula, then sprinkle over the finely chopped candied peanuts. Slide the pan into the refrigerator to set the topping, about 20 minutes; if you’d like to serve the squares cold, keep them refrigerated for at least 3 hours before cutting.
Cut into 16 bars, each roughly 2 ½ inches on a side.
My notes:
- I used semi-sweet chocolate.
- I had a really hard time cutting these after refrigerating for only 20 minutes, so I stuck them in the freezer for a few which made them much easier to cut.
Recipe from Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan.
Double Delicious Cookie Bars
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I admit it, the first time I tried this recipe, it failed. And I mean failed. The crust didn’t work, the entire thing was completely stuck to the tin foil, and it was a big gooey mess. Not one to admit defeat so quickly–especially when it comes to a recipe with a mere five ingredients–I gave it another go, this time using a glass dish and no foil. And it worked!
These bars are gooey and sweet and were a hit at the office. Make sure you cut them into tiny squares because a little goes a long way!
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine
1 (14-ounce) can EAGLE BRAND Sweetened Condensed Milk (NOT evaporated milk)
1 cup (6 ounces) semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup (6 ounces) peanut butter-flavored chips
Preparation
Preheat oven to 350ºF (325ºF for glass dish). In small bowl, combine graham cracker crumbs and butter; mix well. Press crumb mixture firmly on bottom of 13X9-inch baking pan.
Pour EAGLE BRAND® evenly over crumb mixture. Layer evenly with remaining ingredients; press down firmly with fork.
Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool. Cut into bars. Store leftovers covered at room temperature.
My Notes
I used chocolate graham crackers as Jennifer did over here. And chip wise, I used caramel swirl and chocolate chip, but you can use whatever you have in your pantry.
Recipe from Eagle Brand via Bake or Break.
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
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Apparently January is the month of peanut butter and chocolate over here at Nosh With Me. And why not, since that is one of the best flavor combinations around, right? These cookies are chewy in the center and crisp on the outside which in my opinion, makes for the perfect texture. And the extra sugar on the outside adds a nice touch.
I didn’t have any peanut butter chips in the house, so I replaced them with chocolate chips. While the cookie was good, I think the peanut butter chips would have definitely enhanced the flavor and I recommend using them. Fear not, even sans peanut butter chips, these are being gobbled up by coworkers as I write this.
It should also be noted that I just now discovered my camera has a macro setting (duh?) and now I can take somewhat close up pictures that won’t end up blurry. Speaking of photos, I’m kind of digging the one large photo with a link to the process photos. What do you think? Do you like it or do you prefer the old format? (Photos of the baking process here.)
Ingredients
1¼ cups all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup peanut butter at room temperature
¾ cup plus 1 tablespoon (for sprinkling) sugar
½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup peanut butter chips
½ cup chocolate chips
Preparation
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, the baking soda, the baking powder, and the salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and the peanut butter together until fluffy. Add the sugars and beat until smooth. Add the egg and mix well. Add the milk and the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture and beat thoroughly. Stir in the chips. Place sprinkling sugar on a plate. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls into the sugar, then onto ungreased cookie sheets, leaving several inches between for expansion. Using a fork, lightly indent with a crissscross pattern (I used the back of a palette knife to keep it smooth on top), but do not overly flatten cookies. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Do not overbake. Cookies may appear to be underdone, but they are not.
Cool the cookies on the sheets for 1 minute, then remove to a rack to cool completely.
Recipe from Smitten Kitchen.
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In other food news, I’ve adopted a food blogger! Kristin at Dine and Dish thought up the brilliant idea and I decided I’d give it a whirl. So, without further ado, let me introduce Paula at Half Baked. Not only does everything on her blog look delicious, her photographs are beautiful as well. Stop by her blog and say hello!
