Tag Archives: Hamentashen

Pistachio Hamentashen (Viral Dubai Pistachio Chocolate Hamentashen)

These Pistachio Hamentashen take inspiration from the viral Dubai Pistachio Chocolate bar, blending rich Middle Eastern flavours with a modern twist on the classic Purim treat. The filling is a decadent mix of crispy buttered kataifi (shredded phyllo), velvety pistachio paste, and creamy melted white chocolate, creating a luscious contrast of textures. Encased in a delicate, lightly sweetened cookie dough, each hamentashen bakes up to golden perfection. A finishing dip into milk chocolate along with a sprinkle of toasted pistachios, adds an extra layer of indulgence. These aren’t just hamentashen—they’re an experience.

When I was growing up, hamentashen always came from a bakery. I never really thought twice about it—that’s just how it was. It wasn’t until I got married and was introduced to my husband’s Aunt Carol that I realized people actually baked their own hamentashen. What a revelation.

Aunt Carol didn’t just bake hamentashen—she made hundreds of them every year, carefully packaging and mailing them to all her nieces and nephews across North America. Her hamentashen were something special: tender cookie dough wrapped around a sweet golden raisin and prune filling, dipped in honey and chopped toasted pecans for the perfect crunch.

She passed away suddenly in 2018, and I miss her dearly. She taught me not only how to bake hamentashen but also so many other lessons that have stayed with me. Every year, I make her hamentashen, and my family is happy. But as a food blogger, I also love to experiment—honouring tradition while creating new flavours.

This year’s creation is inspired by the viral Dubai Pistachio Chocolate bar—an indulgent mix of crispy buttered kataifi, pistachio paste, and white chocolate, all wrapped in a delicate cookie dough. After baking, they’re dipped in milk chocolate and finished with toasted pistachios. A little nod to tradition, with a modern, luxurious twist.

See them come together.

Keys to Success for Pistachio Hamentashen

Kataifi can be tricky to find. This delicate shredded phyllo dough isn’t always stocked in regular grocery stores, but you might have luck at Middle Eastern or specialty markets. If not, Amazon to the rescue!
Pistachio Paste vs. Pistachio Butter or Cream – Pistachio paste is made from 100% pure pistachios, while pistachio butter or cream usually contains added sugar and other ingredients. For this recipe, you want pure pistachio paste to get the best flavour and texture. It can be tricky to find in stores, but you can easily order it online.
Pinch the corners tightly! To keep the filling from leaking out, make sure to pinch the corners of your hamentashen firmly. Press them well where the edges meet, ensuring they hold their triangular shape while baking. Chilling the assembled hamentashen before baking also helps them keep their shape.

Pistachio hamentaashen, inspired by the viral Dubai chocolate bar.

Pistachio Hamentashen (Viral Dubai Pistachio Chocolate Hamentashen)

These hamentashen are inspired by the Viral Dubai Chocolate Bar. I stuffed my hamentashen with a filling crafted from pistachio paste, white chocolate and and crispy kataifi dough (shredded phyllo dough).

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Servings hamentashen

Calories 288 kcal

Ingredients

Pistachio Filling

100 grams kataifi pastry (shredded phyllo dough)
40 grams unsalted butter
165 grams white chocolate, coarsely chopped
165 grams pistachio paste
12 grams vegetable oil
20 grams icing sugar
1/4 teaspoon Diamond Crystal Kosher salt, or 1/8 teaspoon Morton's Kosher salt

Hamentashen Dough

170 grams unsalted butter, removed from fridge 30 minutes before starting to make dough
133 grams granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
1 large egg, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon Diamond Crystal Kosher salt, or 1/4 teaspoon Morton's kosher salt
320 grams all purpose flour
1 Tablespoon water

Assembly and topping

1 large egg white, well beaten
150 grams milk chocolate
100 grams shelled pistachios, toasted and finely chopped

Instructions

Pistachio Filling

Chop kataifi into small pieces, about 2 cm. in length. Use your fingertips to gently separate the strands and fluff the kataifi.
In a large skillet, melt butter. Add kataifi and toast over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it becomes golden brown. Set aside to let it cool.
Place white chocolate into a medium sized heatproof bowl. Microwave on 50% power for 30 seconds. Stir and continue heating in additional 10-15 second bursts, until completely melted. Stir in pistachio paste, vegetable oil, icing sugar and salt.
Pour white chocolate-pistachio paste mixture over browned kataifi. Using 2 forks or your hands, mix until all the kataifi is coated. Set aside.

Make dough

In a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down sides of the bowl. With motor running, add vanilla and egg, then mix to incorporate. Add flour and salt and mix on low until all the flour is incorporated. Add 1 Tablespoons of water and continue mixing until dough comes together. Squeeze a handful of dough. It should hold together. If it’s still crumbly, add another Tablespoon of water.
Divide dough in half and roll each piece, between 2 sheets of parchment paper, to an ⅛” thickness. Chill rolled dough in fridge for one hour. (Dough will keep in fridge for 5 days or can be frozen for up to a month.)

Form Hamentashen:

Remove one dough sheet from the fridge and place on work surface. Peel off top parchment sheet and gently lay it back in place. Flip the dough over; peel off and set top parchment layer aside. Use a 3-inch round cookie cutter (or upside-down glass) to stamp out as many rounds as possible, leaving as little space between them as possible so that you do not have too many scraps. Place rounds on parchment lined baking sheet, setting them 1½ inches apart. Set scraps aside.
Brush the edge of the circles with water. Spoon about 1 Tablespoon of the pistachio filling into the center of each circle. Fold up three sides of the dough against the filling, forming a triangular shape. Pinch the edges and corners firmly so that the shape holds together. Repeat with remaining filling and dough. Scraps can be rerolled and chilled for at least 30 minutes before cutting and baking more hamentashen
Preheat oven to 350°F. Chill unbaked hamentashen for about 30 minutes before baking. It will prevent the hamentashen from slumping and they will hold their shape much better. Brush chilled hamentashen with egg white.
Before baking, add a second baking sheet under chilled hamentashen. The double baking sheets will prevent the bottom of the hamentashen from getting too brown, before the tops and sides are done. Bake the hamentashen, rotating baking sheet halfway through, until golden, 16-18 minutes. Let cool completely.
Place milk chocolate into a medium sized heatproof bowl. Microwave on 50% power for 15 seconds. Stir and continue heating in additional 10-15 second bursts, until completely melted.
Dip hamentashen into melted milk chocolate. Sprinkle on some chopped pistachios. Chill until chocolate is firm. Hamentashen should be stored in an airtight container for 5 days or frozen for up to a month.

Notes

Note: If rolling dough to an even thickness is not a skill you excel at, do yourself a favour and buy some rolling pin guide ring spacer bands. They will make your life so much better.

Instead of dipping the hamentashen in milk chocolate, you could get extra fancy and drizzle them with white and dark chocolate as I did in the video.

Nutrition

Calories: 288kcalCarbohydrates: 30gProtein: 5gFat: 18gSaturated Fat: 8gPolyunsaturated Fat: 2gMonounsaturated Fat: 6gTrans Fat: 0.3gCholesterol: 28mgSodium: 107mgPotassium: 176mgFiber: 2gSugar: 15gVitamin A: 278IUVitamin C: 1mgCalcium: 33mgIron: 1mg

Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

Malted Milk Chocolate Hamentashen

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The Jewish holiday of Purim begins next week at sundown on Monday March 6. The traditional Purim treat are triangular shaped filled cookies known as Hamentashen. For those not familiar with this Jewish holiday, I present to you a basic primer, my version of Purim 101. Essentially, the Festival of Purim commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in ancient Persia were saved from extermination. As in every good story, you have your heroes and your villans.

The heroes of the story are Esther, a beautiful young Jewish woman living in Persia, and her cousin Mordecai, who raised her as if she were his daughter. Esther was taken to the house of Achashveirosh, King of Persia, to become part of his harem. King Achashveirosh loved Esther more than his other concubines, and made Esther his queen. Like all intelligent wives, she kept a thing or two about herself hidden from her husband. Upon advice from her cousin Mordecai, she kept her Jewish identity a secret from the King.

Our story’s villan is Haman, a rather arrogant, egotistical advisor to the King. The King appointed Haman as his Prime Minister. Haman despised Mordecai because Mordecai refused to bow down before Haman every time he passed by. Rather than seeking to destroy Mordecai alone for this slight, Haman decided to take revenge on the entire Jewish population living in the Persian empire. The King gave Haman permission to do as he pleased. Haman’s plan was to exterminate all of the Jews.

Nothing got past Queen Esther. She had her finger on the pulse on the kingdom. Somehow she overheard this plot to annihilate all the Jews. She consulted her cousin Mordecai and he persuaded Esther to speak to the king on behalf of the Jewish people. She told her husband, the king, of Haman’s plot against her people and somehow convinced him to save the Jewish people. We’re never told exactly how she convinced him, but there are rumours! The Jewish people were saved, and Haman and his ten sons were hung.

The holiday of Purim focuses on the pleasures of food and drink, more than any other Jewish holiday. It is a time for celebrating and letting go. The shape of hamentashen symbolically represent Haman’s three-cornered hat. Typically, hamentashen are filled with jam or a poppyseed filling.

I’m bucking tradition here and flavouring my hamentashen with Malted Milk Chocolate. Check out the video to see how they come together.

If you are not baking with malted milk powder, you’re missing out on a ton of flavour. Stella Parks called malted milk powder the umami bomb of the baking world. It adds a toasted creamy richness to your baked goods. Ovaltine is one brand readily available at the supermarket. It contains the addition of chocolate. For a more concentrated hit of malted flavour, without the chocolate, I love Hoosier Hills Farms malted milk powder.

These Malted Milk Chocolate hamentashen have a triple hit of malted milk. There is malted milk powder in both the dough and the filling and then I chopped up some malted milk balls to coat the dipped hamentashen in.

Milk chocolate really allows the malted flavour to shine through. Jesse Szewczyk inspired the filling for these hamentashen with her Malted Milk Chocolate Rugelach.

If you’re a Hamentashen novice, here are a few tips for success:

Roll dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper and chill before cutting into circles
Don’t overfill. You will regret it when they burst open in the oven.
Brush edges of dough with beaten egg white. it acts as an effective glue to hold them together.
Pinch edges and corners really well when shaping.
Freeze formed hamentashen for about 10 minutes before baking. They will hold their shape better.
Brush unbaked hamentashen with beaten egg white for some shine.

Click here to print recipe for Malted Milk Chocolate Hamentashen.

Poppyseed Fig and Walnut Hamentashen

2 Replies

Hamentashen are the traditional treat baked for the Jewish holiday of Purim, which, this year, falls on Thursday February 25. Essentially, they are a triangular shaped cookie stuffed with a sweet filling.

The Festival of Purim commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in ancient (4th century BCE) Persia were saved from extermination. If you’re curious to learn a bit more about the holiday, check out this post I wrote a few years ago.

We’re all about texture here in the salt and serenity kitchen, so this year I added some poppyseeds to my hamentashen dough for added crunch. I have loved poppyseeds ever since I was a little girl. My paternal grandmother baked poppyseed cookies. We called them Bubbe Cookies. She lived in Philadelphia and a few times each year she would mail us cookies. She always packed them in a shoebox. When that package arrived, my sisters and I would get so excited. I suspect that is where my love of online shopping stems from. There is something so exhilarating about getting a package and opening it.

I filled the hamentashen with fig jam. My favourite is the Dalmatia brand. Don’t be tempted to overfill the hamentashen. A heaping teaspoon if perfect. Make sure you brush the edges with beaten egg white, to glue the seams closed. Pinch the corners firmly to really seal them. I like to put them in the freezer for about 15 minutes before baking. It helps them to hold their shape during baking.

Once they are cooled, I dipped one edge in honey and then into some crushed candied maple walnuts. Double crunch!

Click here to print recipe for Poppyseed-Fig-and-Walnut-Hamentashen-2 Download

Strawberry Rhubarb Hamentashen

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Sam Sifton, food editor of the New York Times, has an interesting theory regarding pizza. The first slice of pizza a child sees and tastes becomes, for him, pizza. In effect, that becomes your standard by which you judge all other pizzas. I believe the same could be said for hamentashen. We have a predisposed love of the hamentashen we grew up with.

I grew up in Toronto, and in our family Purim was celebrated with hamantashen from Open Window Bakery. They were huge with a hard, crumbly cookie dough exterior and either a prune or poppy-seed filling. My sisters and I fought over the poppy-seed ones. (Mom, why did you even bother buying the prune ones?)

Over the years, I have experimented with different types of fillings (hello cinnamon bun hamentashen, salted caramel apple hamentashen, dried cherry and pecan hamentashen, and maple pecan hamentashen. Experimenting with fillings is fun, although there are the die-hard traditionalists, like my husband, that just want the “Aunt Carol” hamentashen they grew up with.

Where I get a bit cranky is when people start playing around with the dough that encases the filling. Many of the newer recipes include cream cheese or sour cream, in an attempt to make a flaky dough. People, we are making hamentashen here, not rugelach. Cream cheese and sour cream do not belong in hamentashen dough. The shell of a hamentashen should be cookie-like, firm and crumbly with a toothsome chew.

I did stray slightly by sprinkling a little bit of freeze-dried strawberry powder over my dough, as I was rolling it out. It added a hint of strawberry flavour to the dough, and looked so pretty. Sadly, the streaks disappeared upon baking, but the flavour was there. It’s an optional step.

I’m going to ask you to make your own strawberry rhubarb jam. Store-bought is fine, but if you have an extra 20 minutes, this jam is stellar. I discovered this recipe from Jake Cohen over at thefeedfeed. Sweet and tart with a little pop of acidity from rice wine vinegar, you will find yourself putting this s##t on everything.

Once the jam is made, the process goes fairly quickly, unless you have a mailing list of 25 to send hamentashen to!

Click here to print recipe for Strawberry-Rhubarb-Hamentashen Download

Poppyseed Fig and Walnut Hamentashen

10 Replies

Purim begins this week at sundown on Monday March 9. For those not familiar with this Jewish holiday, I present to you a basic primer, my version of Purim 101. Essentially, the Festival of Purim commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in ancient Persia were saved from extermination. As in every good story, you have your heroes and your villans.

The heroes of the story are Esther, a beautiful young Jewish woman living in Persia (now known as Iran), and her cousin Mordecai, who raised her as if she were his daughter. Esther was taken to the house of Achashveirosh, King of Persia, to become part of his harem. King Achashveirosh loved Esther more than his other concubines, and made Esther his queen. Like all intelligent wives, she kept a thing or two about herself hidden from her husband. Upon advice from her cousin Mordecai, she kept her Jewish identity a secret from the King.

Our story’s villan is Haman, a rather arrogant, egotistical advisor to the King. The King appointed Haman as his Prime Minister. Haman had a particular hate-on for Mordecai because Mordecai refused to bow down before Haman every time he passed by. Rather than seeking to destroy Mordecai alone for this slight, Haman decided to take revenge on the entire Jewish population living in the Persian empire. The King gave Haman permission to do as he pleased. Haman’s plan was to exterminate all of the Jews.

Nothing got past Queen Esther. She had her finger on the pulse on the kingdom. Somehow she overheard this plot to annihilate all the Jews. She consulted her cousin Mordecai and he persuaded Esther to speak to the king on behalf of the Jewish people. This was a dangerous thing for Esther to do, because anyone who came into the king’s presence without being summoned could be put to death, and she had not been summoned. She told him of Haman’s plot against her people and somehow convinced him to save the Jewish people. We’re never told exactly how she convinced him, but there are rumours! The Jewish people were saved, and Haman and his ten sons were hanged on the gallows that had been prepared for Mordecai.

The holiday of Purim focuses on the pleasures of food and drink, more than any other Jewish holiday. It is a time for celebrating and letting go. In fact, traditional Jewish learning requires a person to drink until he cannot tell the difference between “cursed be Haman” and “blessed be Mordecai,” though opinions differ as to exactly how drunk that is. The traditional Purim treat is a little triangular cookie typically filled with a fruit or poppy-seed filling. The shape supposedly represents Haman’s three-cornered hat.

When I was a child, I didn’t know anyone who baked homemade hamentashen. They were always bought at Open Window Bakery in Toronto. There were 2 filling options, prune or poppyseed. Much like the New York vs. Montreal style bagel debate, a prune vs. poppyseed debate can also get quite ugly. Our family liked the prune ones better. I never really liked the texture or flavour of a poppyseed filling. But I do love a poppyseed cookie!

The hamentashen of choice in my husband’s family are my Aunt Carol’s Hamentashen, I always make a big batch of those, but every year I challenge myself to come up a new flavour. I wondered what would happen if I put poppyseed in the dough? I started with the very delicious butter dough from Jake Cohen at the feedfeed and added a heaping tablespoon of poppyseeds.

I have recently become enamoured with this fig jam (it’s killer on a cheese plate), and figured it would make a wonderful pairing with the poppyseed dough.

If you’re a Hamentashen novice, here are a few tips for success:

Roll dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper and chill before cutting into circles
Don’t overfill with jam. You will regret it when they burst open on the oven.
Brush edges of dough with beaten egg. it acts as an effective glue to hold them together.
Pinch edges and corners really well when shaping.
Freeze formed hamentashen for about 10 minutes before baking. They will hold their shape better.
Brush unbaked hamentashen with beaten egg white for some shine.

While they were quite delicious plain, I wanted to add an additional layer of texture, so I dipped one side in honey and then into toasted chopped walnuts. The bitterness of the walnuts plays so nicely with the sweetness of the fig jam. Plus, it looks so pretty.

Click here to print recipe for Poppyseed-Fig-and-Walnut-Hamentashen Download

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp Hamentashen

Cinnamon Bun Hamentashen with Almond Shortbread Dough

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I first made these hamentashen six years ago. Inspired by cinnamon buns, I stuffed the hamentashen with brown sugar, cinnamon, butter and chopped almonds and pecans. What could be bad about that? I used my Aunt Carol’s traditional oil based dough and once baked, I drizzled them with an icing sugar glaze. They were a big hit.

But then, last year I had a hamentashen epiphany. I discovered Israeli bread baking guru Uri Scheft‘s almond butter shortbread dough . He wrapped up his poppy seed hamentashen with this gorgeous buttery dough. I made them and I was hooked!

I wondered what would happen if I put the cinnamon bun filling into the almond shortbread dough? I mean, I knew it would be good, but I had no idea how seriously good it would be. That chewy cinnamon filling wrapped up in a crumbly cookie dough is off the charts good!

I went a little bit rogue and made the dough with salted butter, given my success with the Salted Butter Skor Shortbread cookies.

Click here to print recipe for Cinnamon Bun Hamentashen with Almond Shortbread Dough.

Maple Pecan Hamentashen

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Hamentashen are the traditional treat baked for the Jewish holiday of Purim, which, this year, falls on Thursday March 1. The Festival of Purim commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in ancient (4th century BCE) Persia were saved from extermination.

The celebration of Purim will be bitter-sweet for me this year. Sweet because, well…. Hamentashen! Bitter because this will be my first Purim without my Aunt Carol. She passed away, suddenly, a few weeks ago. She is actually my husband’s aunt, but from the very first time I met her, over 36 years ago, she always made me feel like a part of the family. I miss her very much.

It was from Aunt Carol that I learned that all hamentashen didn’t come from a bakery. (I also learned that it is rude to stack dishes at the table when clearing.) Until I met her, I’d never had a homemade hamentashen. My reaction was not that dissimilar to when I found out, from my big sister Faith, that babies don’t come from the stork.

Every year, Aunt Carol and her sister-in-law, Aunt Jen, went into factory mode and produced vast quantities of tiny little triangles of dough filled with a prune and raisin filling, dipped in honey and walnuts. They shipped these hamantashen off to all their children, nieces and nephews across the universe. Sadly, Aunt Jen died about 26 years ago, but Aunt Carol soldiered on alone, continuing the tradition of making hamentashen for everyone in the family. We all looked forward to our little parcels in the mail. It’s possible that my addiction to online shopping is her fault. She conditioned me to get happy when boxes arrived in the mail.

I spent some very happy afternoons in Aunt Carol’s kitchen learning how to master hamentashen. The dough for this recipe is hers. The filling recipe for these hamentashen is my creation. While I love the traditional flavours of poppyseed and prune, I like to play with different flavour combos.A few years ago year I made Cinnamon Bun Hamentashen. Last year I baked Salted Caramel Apple Hamentashen, Poppy Seed Hamentashen and Dried Cherry and Pecan Hamentashen.

I love the combo of maple and pecans. I blitzed some toasted pecans, maple butter and some cream cheese together to make this delicious filling. If you can’t find maple butter, a combo of brown sugar and maple syrup would be a good substitute. In the recipe link below, I give proportions.

Once cooled, the baked hamentashen get a dip in a maple glaze and some finely chopped pecans.

Click here to print recipe for Maple Pecan Hamentashen.

Click here to print recipe for Aunt Carol’s Hamentashen.

Poppy Seed Hamentashen

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This is the final instalment of my hamentashen treatise (see part 1 and part 2). Today we’re taking it old-school with the classic Poppy Seed Hamentashen. This is the hamentashen I grew up with. This recipe comes from Uri Scheft. These are the most popular hamentashen at Lehamim, his Tel Aviv bakery.Make sure you start with very fresh poppy seeds. You’ll need to grind them up a bit. I found that my spice grinder was perfect for the task. The poppy seeds get cooked down into a paste with some milk, sugar and butter. Lemon zest adds a perfect zing of freshness. I learned a great trick from Uri for keeping the hamentashen dough from getting soggy. A handful of cake or muffin crumbs absorb any moisture in the filling leading to hamentashen with a nice crisp bottom crust. I didn’t have any cake or muffin crumbs on hand, so I bought a package of 6 inexpensive white cupcakes at the supermarket, scraped off the icing and ground them up in the food processor to make crumbs. I let the crumbs sit out at room temperature for a few hours to let them dry out a bit. Extra crumbs can be stashed in a freezer bag for another day. I found it easiest to fill hamentashen if I first put the filling into a disposable piping bag.

Click here to print recipe for Poppy Seed Hamentashen.

Salted Caramel Apple Hamentashen

1 Reply

I’m not quite sure how I feel about the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast (to be released March 17). The original is time honoured and perfect. Frankly, I’m worried. Sometimes you shouldn’t mess with a classic. Remember Lindsay Lohan in the remake of Parent Trap? Jackie Chan as the updated Mr. Miyagi in Karate Kid ? Billy Bob Thornton in Bad News Bears? Enough said.

But sometimes messing with the classics works. Traditional hamentashen are filled with either prune or poppyseed filling. In this updated version, apples are cooked down to a thick sauce. A big scoop of dulce de leche and a judicious sprinkling of salt are added and the resulting filling is quite sublime. I have to give credit for this filling to the talented blogger Tori Avey. It was her genius idea. I just took it and wrapped it in a buttery almond shortbread shell.

Salt and Serenity

Tales from my kitchen

Tag Archives: Hamentashen

Pistachio Hamentashen (Viral Dubai Pistachio Chocolate Hamentashen)

Keys to Success for Pistachio Hamentashen