Recipe Sat Apr 05 2008

Hamantashen Vegan Style

A friend invited me to her Purim party a few weeks back, and then seemed to chuckle at my interest in making a vegan version of hamantashen. I told her that someone had once made me some very tasty vegan rugelach, a feat perhaps equally surprising. Later she sent me a vegan recipe she'd found for hamantashen. I mixed the dough, chilled it overnight, rolled it out, cut it, dotted with preserves, and tri-folded each piece into a hat. The recipe said to bake for 10 to 12 minutes, but I found myself adding 2 minutes to the kitchen timer more than a few times after 10 minutes. I feared I'd burn the hamantashen, wandering if I should pull them when I saw the slightest hint of golden brown on the edges. I waited another 2 minutes, and then took them out just in time; the bottoms were golden.

Don't skimp on quality preserves, because whatever fruit substance you have really comes through when the dough bakes up like a brilliant shortbread. I used Earth Balance's Buttery Sticks for the non-dairy butter. If I make this again, I might follow another friend's suggestion to add poppy seeds to the dough for a nice crunch.

Here's the recipe.

Update: The morning after I posted this, I took hamantashen dough from my fridge, and went to work on making another batch. It came with me for a picnic on a grassy strip that is part of Chicago’s boulevard system — two parallel columns of green space buffering a few lanes of traffic in front of lovely old homes and apartment buildings, which wind their not exactly contiguous way around Chicago. We set out blankets down and went to work on food and drink on the first glorious weekend of spring.

- Chris Brunn