{"id":1904,"date":"2012-03-05T19:13:38","date_gmt":"2012-03-06T00:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/homeshuling\/?p=1904"},"modified":"2015-02-23T19:16:21","modified_gmt":"2015-02-24T00:16:21","slug":"best-hamentashen-ever-even-better-and-a-purim-opera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/2012\/03\/best-hamentashen-ever-even-better-and-a-purim-opera.html","title":{"rendered":"Best Hamentashen Ever, even better. And, a Purim opera."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This time of year, I&#8217;m always excited when I look at my google analytics and see that people have landed at my blog by searching for &#8220;hamentashen recipe&#8221;. I love the idea of people all over the world making my great-grandmother&#8217;s fabulous hamentashen, the same ones my mom made with me and that I make with my girls.<\/p>\n<p>The recipe is undeniably awesome, but it can be a little persnickety. So I&#8217;ve re-posted it, improving the directions slightly to make the experience a little more fool-proof. (Not that I&#8217;m calling you a fool, mind you.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hamentashen<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dough Ingredients:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>2.5 &#8211; 3 cups flour (add 2.5 cups to start, and reserve the last half cup to add gradually as needed)<\/li>\n<li>2 large eggs<\/li>\n<li>2 tsp baking powder<\/li>\n<li>1 stick butter or margarine<\/li>\n<li>\u00bd tsp salt<\/li>\n<li>\u00be cup sugar<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Cream the butter and sugar. Add eggs. Mix. Add the dry ingredients. This is easiest to do with a Kitchen Aid or another good electric mixer.\u00a0Add the last half cup of flour gradually, just until the dough holds together and is only slightly sticky. Form a ball, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Prune Filling\u00a0 (my great-grandmother\u2019s specialty):\u00a0 \u00bd lb pitted prunes soaked overnight in water (about an inch higher than the prunes) then cook with a little sugar and cinnamon until very soft. Mash to break up the prunes (I sometimes puree it with an immersion blender, but it\u2019s not necessary.).\u00a0 Squeeze in a little lemon to taste.<\/p>\n<p>Roll the dough, and cut out circles ~3\u201d diameter (I use a drinking glass for this.). To see how to fill and fold the pastries,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OeB4iSfSoig&amp;feature=related\" target=\"_blank\">watch this video<\/a>\u00a0from Shalom Sesame, made by the Sesame Street Workshop (Folding starts at around 2 minutes, but the whole video is worth watching.)<\/p>\n<p>Recently, I&#8217;ve started rolling my dough in between two sheets of parchment paper and can&#8217;t believe it took me over 40 years to discover this trick.<\/p>\n<p>Bake at 375 for 12-15 minutes, until lightly brown around the edges.<\/p>\n<p>This year the girls insisted on doing almost everything themselves. Here they are hard at work:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/homeshuling\/files\/2012\/03\/043.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1905\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/86\/2012\/03\/043-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/homeshuling\/files\/2012\/03\/044.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1906\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/86\/2012\/03\/044-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/homeshuling\/files\/2012\/03\/045.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1907\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/86\/2012\/03\/045-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a>This past Sunday, when we should have been baking, I took my daughters and one of their friends to participate in a Purim opera at the National Yiddish Book Store. Children had the opportunity to appear as a children&#8217;s chorus and a few walk-on rolls. Here are Zoe and her friend Ryan as contestants in the beauty pageant to select a new queen.<\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AuUUH9Eitkc&#038;feature=youtu.be\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AuUUH9Eitkc&amp;feature=youtu.be<\/a>\n<p>Here they are dressed as animals performing at the dinner Esther prepares for the King and Haman (who looked suspiciously like Louis C.K.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/homeshuling\/files\/2012\/03\/027.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1908\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/86\/2012\/03\/027-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Time to make those <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/homeshuling\/2012\/02\/edible-purim-baskets-and-introducing-the-cookie-fairies.html\">rice crispy-treat baskets<\/a>! Chag Sameyach!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This time of year, I&#8217;m always excited when I look at my google analytics and see that people have landed at my blog by searching for &#8220;hamentashen recipe&#8221;. I love the idea of people all over the world making my great-grandmother&#8217;s fabulous hamentashen, the same ones my mom made with me and that I make&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,1],"tags":[40,39],"class_list":["post-1904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewish","category-judaism","category-parenting","tag-hamentashen","tag-purim"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Best Hamentashen Ever, even better. And, a Purim opera. - Homeshuling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/2012\/03\/best-hamentashen-ever-even-better-and-a-purim-opera.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Best Hamentashen Ever, even better. And, a Purim opera. - Homeshuling\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This time of year, I&#8217;m always excited when I look at my google analytics and see that people have landed at my blog by searching for &#8220;hamentashen recipe&#8221;. 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I teach, write, and try to create a vibrant Jewish home for my family while spending very little time in synagogue. I guess you could say we're home-shuling.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/author\/ameltzer"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1904"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2015,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904\/revisions\/2015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/homeshuling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}