Preparing Hamantashen

The Purim holiday is coming up quickly (it begins Wednesday evening, March 4th this year), so it's time to prepare lots and lots of hamantashen. And that's exactly what our 5th and 6th graders did during the first half hour of this past Tuesday and Wednesday sessions, during our monthly Hebrew cooking session. The focus of this session is to review and introduce commonly used Hebrew vocabulary related to cooking and baking, as well as to introduce traditional Jewish and Israeli recipes associated with specific Jewish holidays. It also provides us with half an hour of Hebrew Through Movement vocabulary review as we give directions for each recipe.

Since we only have the half hour to prepare the recipe, I mixed the dough ahead of time at home. The dough for this easy hamantashen recipe is made from a 15-oz. box of prepared moist yellow cake mix, one cup of regular flour, two eggs and two tablespoons of water. For the gluten-free recipe, I found a gluten-free yellow cake mix and used gluten-free flour with a 1/4 tsp. xanthan gum added in, along with the eggs and water.

When the students entered the classroom and sat at their tables, they found a ball of dough sitting on a small amount of flour and a rolling pin which I dusted ahead of time with flour, since the dough is rather sticky.

Reisheet kol, l'galgel et ha'batzek  (First of all, roll the dough) (to 1/8" thickness)

Achshav, leech'rot eegooleem me'ha'batzek... (Now, cut circles from the dough...) (using the 3" diameter rims of plastic cups)

...az la'seem et ha'eegooleem al ha'tavneet. (...then put the circles on the baking sheet.)

L'galgel et ha'batzek, ad sh'eyn yoter. (Roll the dough 'til there's none left.)

La'seem kapeet shel reeba b'emtza kol eegool. (Put a teaspoon of preserves - we used strawberry - in the middle of each circle.)

Achshav, l'kapel v'l'tzavet shalosh peenot shel ha'ooga. (Now, fold and pinch three corners of the cookie.)

Be sure to keep pinching the corners until they stick together!

Achshav zeh moochan la'seem ba'tanoor l'asara dakot. (Now it's ready to put in the oven for 10 minutes.)

U'va'sof, l'nakot et ha'shoolchan leefnei la'lechet l't'feela. (And finally, clean the table before going to t'feela.)

Practicing to become a master hamantashen maker can be a very enjoyable process...

... as you can tell from the expressions on the student faces!!!

The final results are definitely worth the effort!

 If you are a lover of hamantashen, I suggest you attend LAFTY's annual Purim Carnival on Sunday, March 1st, where truly amazing hamantashen will be available for sale.  See you there!