Monday Night Menus: Nomentashen

It's hard to pinpoint my absolute favorite food that goes along with Jewish holidays. I could try, I'm sure...but once I start to think about brisket and matzah ball soup and stuffed cabbage and honey cake, it all gets a little bit hazy, and I get a lot hungry.

Purim is no exception.

The holiday as a whole might be up there as one of my favorites. What's there not to like? Dressing up in costume, eating delicious treats, drinking wine, shouting and making loud noise, listening to an interesting story...it's all pretty special.

And so, in an attempt to harness some of the awesomeness that is Purim, the kiddo and I decided to make some Hamentashen yesterday. Hamentashen are cookies formed into triangles and are made to remember the villain of the Purim story, Hamen. There are a variety of recipes, but it's basically a cookie dough filled with deliciousness. This is our version.

Ingredients

The recipe only calls for 2 eggs...don't mind those other two stragglers - they became breakfast!

2 cups of all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp orange zest
2 eggs
1/4 cup oil
1/8 cup orange juice
Filling of your choice (this can be anything you like. Traditional filling is prune, poppyseed or fruit jam.)

Our filling

Directions

1. Sift all dry ingredients together and mix with orange zest.

This recipe is super kid friendly, so don't be shy about getting them into the mix

2. Make a well inside the dry ingredients and crack both eggs into there. Add oil and orange juice and then stir to combine.

3. Knead dough and then dump out onto floured surface. Using a rolling pin, flatten to 1/8".

4. Cut out circles from dough about 2.5" in diameter. We just used a drinking glass and it came out fine.

5. This is where having a little sous-chef comes in handy. He cut out the circles while I filled them up. Spoon 1-2 teaspoons of filling into the center of the circle and fold up sides to make a triangle, pinching at the corners. We made half the dough with apricot jam filling and the other half with Nutella.