This week's bake with the
Rose's Alpha Bakers is
Hamantaschen, small cookies eaten during the Jewish holiday Purim (
learn more about Purim). Hamantaschen are traditionally made with a poppyseed filling, however I like to save my poppyseed-eating for cakes and muffins so I improvised and did more of a rugelach-type filling. In all seriousness, I like poppyseeds - but not that much - so I thought a cookie filled with poppyseed paste would be too overpowering.
My poor little Hamantaschen - which were supposed to bake up in a cute little triangle shape - were a complete fail. They
all opened during baking so I ended up with more of an open-faced mini mince pie cookie. I followed the directions exactly in terms of the chilling of the dough, the rolling of the dough (thickness and size of the cookie), and I don't think I overfilled them, so I'm at a loss of what went wrong. Maybe I should have used a folded over corner instead of pinching them closed.
I also wish I had mixed up the apricot lekvar with the nuts, raisins and cinnamon-sugar so it all melted together better, but...oh well. Even if they don't look the way they should, they were tasty.
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| you can see the flaky pâte sucrée crust... |
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| ...but they are all flat flat flat...boo hoo! |
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| mise en place for the cookie crust |
I prefer to make my pie crusts by hand rather than in the food processor as instructed in the recipe (seems easier to get a real feel for the dough, you don't over-work the crust, and you don't have to wash the food processor bowl and blade afterward). It's easy to do by hand - just go fast and keep your hands well covered in flour (so their heat doesn't melt the butter). This cookie dough was actually a pâte sucrée crust, which has sugar and an egg yolk, so it's a sweeter and more sturdy dough than regular pie crust.
In these first four photos I'm incorporating the butter into the flour-sugar mixture. In the next four, I've added the cream and egg yolk and am forming the dough. The dough is then divided and given a rest in the fridge before rolling it out.
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| incorporating the butter |
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| finishing the dough |
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| filling for the cookies |
Rose raves about muscovado sugar - and uses it in many recipes - so I bought a 2-pack of huge(!) tubs of
light muscovado sugar from Amazon.com. It was a bit expensive - for sugar - but much, much cheaper than buying the small packs available at the grocery store.
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| smells delicious! |
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| cutting out my cookie rounds |
I wish I knew what went wrong. Maybe I left the openings too large? Maybe I should have sealed the edges with water instead of an egg wash? Too much filling? All of the above?
They are a bit more open than the pictures in the cookbook, but I pinched those edges pretty good! Oh well. I'll just pretend I did it on purpose...mini open-faced mince pies ;)
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| cookies assembled, given an eggwash, and chilled |
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| a close-up |
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| every single one opened back up... |
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| mini open-faced mince pies |
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| still delicious! |
Bye for now...
