Not your grandma’s hamantaschen? Even though it had the feel of a gourmet dessert evening, red velvet took a backseat this week to raspberry jam.
About 50 women ranging in age from teenagers to retirees gathered in the Philadelphia suburbs two days before the start of Purim to make the tri-cornered treats associated with the holiday. It was less instructional and more DIY for a few hours on Tuesday night, with a table of crackers, cheese, chocolate, nuts and even a little wine to keep the juices flowing.
Plastic bowls at place settings contained recipe directions, a rolling pin, a measuring cup, a pastry mat, disposable gloves, an apron and a long plastic mixing spoon. Ingredients for a pareve cookie—flour, oil, sugar, eggs, baking powder, vanilla and orange juice—were set out in one area with an array of toppings in another. Those ranged from hazelnut and chocolate cream to fruit flavors, and (harkening back to grandma) classic poppy-seed (mohn) and prune (lekvar) fillings.
And then an actual grandmother, who had come for community and to prepare for the holiday, told a story.
Joyce Brown, 67, recalled making hamantaschen with her mother. “She used a very simple recipe—with no eggs and with lemon rind—from a blue-covered book called A Jewish Home,” said the resident of West Chester, Pa., who grew up in Cinnaminson, N.J. They filled them with prune and poppy-seed paste.
“My aunt, however, had a sour-cherry tree,” Brown told JNS. “When I got older, we would pick cherries in the summer, pit them—that was the fun part, what a mess we made in the kitchen—cook them in sugar, and then my mom would bury them in the back of the freezer and dig them out before Purim.”
Cherry hamantaschen … “those were the best,” she ruminated.
Brown, a mother of twins and grandmother of four, said she gave the book to her daughter when she got married eight years ago.
She also mentioned making them in her dormitory kitchenette when she was an undergraduate student at Rutgers University in New Jersey, noting that the scent of baking pastry drew a crowd, mainly of boys.
At a neighboring work table, mother and daughter Brenda and Shira Lowenberg were busy filling and folding, saying they make them annually at home. But this year, they had not yet done so, and 17-year-old Shira wasn’t planning to let them off the hook.
She wanted to use their recipe, which uses orange zest.
“I made them growing up, and carried on the tradition when the kids were little,” Brenda told JNS, referring to her 14-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter. After this, she said, she was planning to make hamantaschen before the start of the holiday on Thursday, adding to the batch they were working on that night, with Shira’s approving gaze.
Purim begins this year at sundown on Thursday, March 13 and lasts through Friday, March 14, right up to Shabbat.
The program was sponsored by Chabad of the Main Line and Chabad of Chester County, Pa., with co-directors Temma Cohen and Tickey Kaplan, respectively, and teacher Roza Kaplan, 22.
‘This is our moment to shine’
Suzy Gefen, 44, who helps run the Hebrew school at Chabad of the Main Line in Merion, Pa., has two sons in day school—one in sixth grade and one in eighth grade. And while they get hamantaschen there in the course of Purim celebrations, she does make them for her family and had filled up an aluminum pan full that night as well.
The hamantaschen were made at the event, but taken home to bake.
“I think it’s important; it becomes tradition,” she told JNS. “Every Jewish holiday has its signature food, one that is highlighted. It helps instill Jewish pride and love for who they are and where they come from.”
So this week when it comes to hamantaschen, she encouraged all to “make it, eat it or showcase it.”
The younger Kaplan, who weaved through the room with a color palette offering sought-after advice (earlier in the evening, she gave a tutorial on fashion and makeup at what was billed as a “Ladies’ Night Out”), made an analogy to Queen Esther, the heroine of the Purim story.
“This is our moment to shine,” she told JNS. “Queen Esther was about beauty and modesty, and stepping up to the plate.”
She added that “coming together as women is such a powerful thing. You are with sisters, with family. You leave feeling uplifted.”
Hamantaschen (Pareve)
Makes 24 pastries
Ingredients:
2 eggs
¾ cup sugar
½ cup oil (Note: ¼ cup is advisable since this recipe uses multiple liquids)
1 tablespoon orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
2½ cups flour
fillings of choice
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix all ingredients in a large bowl until a stiff dough forms. Flour hands if the dough becomes sticky.
Roll out the dough on a pastry mat, wax paper or parchment paper. Cut out circles using the top of a glass.
Add about a teaspoon of fillings in the center of the circle. Fold the dough into a triangular shape, pinching the sides and trying not to have any filling spilling out. Place on a cookie sheet.
Continue with the rest of the dough.
Bake at 350 for 15 to 20 minutes until golden-brown.
Let cool for 5 minutes before removing from cookie sheets.
Chag Sameach!