Chocolate Hamantaschen Recipe on Food52 (2024)

Purim

by: Alice Medrich

March18,2016

4

5 Ratings

  • Makes 20 to 24 three-inch cookies or 24 to 30 two and a half-inch cookies
Author Notes

These are gluten-free and filled with chocolate chips and bittersweet brownie batter. Soft sticky dough like this is best rolled immediately, between parchment and plastic wrap, and then chilled on a cookie sheet for several hours to hydrate and firm the dough before cutting out the cookies! Hint: You don’t need to clear space in the fridge for cookie sheets, just arrange items of similar height together and slide the cookie on top of them. —Alice Medrich

  • Test Kitchen-Approved

What You'll Need

Ingredients
  • For the dough:
  • 1 3/8 cups(140 grams) oat flour
  • 3/8 cup(56 grams) rice flour
  • 3/4 cup(150 grams) sugar
  • 1/4 teaspoonsalt
  • 1/8 teaspoonbaking soda
  • 7 tablespoons(100 grams) unsalted butter, softened
  • 3 tablespoons(40 grams) cream cheese
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 teaspoonpure vanilla extract
  • For the filling:
  • 6 tablespoons(85 grams) unsalted butter
  • 4 ounces(115 grams) unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
  • 3/4 cup(150 grams) sugar
  • 1 teaspoonpure vanilla extract
  • 1/4 teaspoonsalt
  • 2 large eggs, cold
  • 2 tablespoons(20 grams) white rice flour
  • 2/3 cup(115 grams) semisweet chocolate chips
  • 1 whole (or partial) nutmeg, optional, for topping
Directions
  1. To make the cookie dough, put the oat and rice flours, sugar, salt, and baking soda in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Pulse to blend. Add the butter, cream cheese, egg, and vanilla. Process until well blended: The mixture may come to a ball before it begins to spread out again in the bowl. The dough will be very soft and sticky.
  2. Scrape half of the dough onto a sheet of parchment paper and spread it roughly. Cover with a large sheet of plastic wrap. Use a rolling pin and very gentle pressure to roll and smooth it to an even thickness of 1/8-inch. Slide the dough (including the parchment and the plastic wrap) onto a baking sheet and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight. Repeat with the remaining dough and slide it on top of the first piece.
  3. Meanwhile, to make the filling, melt the butter with the unsweetened chocolate in a stainless steel bowl set directly in a wide skillet of almost simmering water. Stir frequently until the mixture is melted and smooth. Remove the bowl from the skillet. Stir in the sugar, vanilla, and salt. Stir the eggs in one at time. Stir in the rice flour. Stir briskly with a spatula until the mixture is thick and smooth and glossy pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Let cool. Stir in the chocolate chips. Refrigerate until needed.
  4. Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and preheat the oven to 325° F.
  5. Remove one sheet of dough from the fridge. Flip it parchment side up. Peel off the parchment and place it on the counter next to the dough. Grasp the plastic wrap and flip the dough back onto the parchment. Peel off the plastic wrap. Working quickly, cut out 3-inch or 2 1/2 –inch cookies and place them 1/2 inch apart on the lined pans. (If the dough becomes too soft to handle, slide it onto a pan and return to the fridge to firm up.) For 3-inch cookies, scoop and place a heaping (13-gram) teaspoonful of filling in the center of each cookie; for 2 12-inch cookies use a rounded teaspoon (11 grams). Bring 3 sides of each cookie up to partially cover the filling and press the edges together to seal them—the dough is quite sticky so that the seam will not open up in the oven! If the dough gets too soft to handle, put the pan in the fridge to firm it up. Repeat with the second sheet of dough.
  6. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the cookies are golden brown. Rotate the pans from top to bottom and front to back about halfway through the baking time to ensure even baking.
  7. While the cookies are baking, press all of the dough scraps together and reroll them between parchment and plastic wrap. Chill until firm enough to cut and fill. Since there is no gluten in the dough, you can reroll scraps as many times as you like without making the cookies tough.
  8. Set the pans, or just the liners on rack to cool. I like to serve them with a little nutmeg grated directly over the top. Cool cookies completely before stacking of storing. Cookies are best on the day they are made, but they keep for 2 to 3 days in an airtight container.

Tags:

  • Cookie
  • Jewish
  • Chocolate
  • Cream Cheese
  • Oat
  • Nutmeg
  • Purim
  • Spring
  • Dessert

See what other Food52ers are saying.

  • drbabs

  • Meg Abramowitz

  • Anita104

  • Heather McClure

Recipe by: Alice Medrich

My career was sparked by a single bite of a chocolate truffle, made by my Paris landlady in 1972. I returned home to open this country’s first chocolate bakery and dessert shop, Cocolat, and I am often “blamed” for introducing chocolate truffles to America.Today I am the James Beard Foundation and IACP award-winning author of ten cookbooks, teach a chocolate dessert class on Craftsy.com, and work with some of the world’s best chocolate companies. In 2018, I won the IACP Award for Best Food-Focused Column (this one!).

Popular on Food52

5 Reviews

drbabs February 26, 2021

These cookies are delicious, but I found the dough extremely hard to work with. It stuck so badly to the parchment that I ended up scraping it all off and rolling it between two sheets of plastic wrap, then freezing it, in order to be able to cut it into circles. Which meant that they weren’t as thin as I would have liked, and I had a lot of filling left over. And I probably used more plastic wrap today than I have in the past 6 months, but the cookies are so, so good.

Meg A. March 20, 2019

These were amazing! Instead of plain rice flour I used the king arthur GF flour and it worked great. They are delicious. We had a little leftover filling and I scooped it onto the cookie sheet and cooked it like cookies and those were delicious too!

Anita104 March 12, 2017

Could the filling for these be baked on its own?

Meg A. March 20, 2019

I used the extra filling to make brownie cookies and it worked perfectly!

Heather M. March 24, 2016

While the chocolate filling looks delicious, could you also fill it with the classic jam or poppyseed filling?

Chocolate Hamantaschen Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

How do you thicken jelly for Hamantaschen? ›

Thicken the filling: I like to use already made jams as fillings. Most jams are too thin for hamantachen, hence the bubbling over in the oven problem. Before I make the dough, I put the jam in a small pot and simmer it on low heat until it's reduced.

How do you keep hamantaschen from opening? ›

This method if folding is not only pretty-- it will help to keep the cookies from opening while they bake. Pinch each corner of the triangle gently but firmly to secure the shape. Repeat this process for the remaining dough circles. Bake according to recipe instructions.

Can you use cornstarch instead of pectin for jelly? ›

Use cornstarch.

It's also a viable option for jam recipes with less added sugar or ones that feature fruits with naturally less sugar or pectin. One thing to keep in mind with cornstarch as a thickening agent is that it makes the jam a little bit cloudy or milky-looking.

How to fix runny jelly without pectin or pectin? ›

To remake cooked jam or jelly without added pectin, for each 1 L (4 cups) jam or jelly add 25 mL (2 tbsp) bottled lemon juice. Heat to boiling and boil jam or jelly hard 3 to 4 minutes, then test for signs of gelling.

Why do Jews eat hamantaschen on Purim? ›

According to the biblical story, the Jews were able to overcome the threat Haman posed through a series of miracles. Today, Jews remember Haman's failure to eradicate them by eating a cookie in the shape of his triangular hat. "A Hamantaschen is wrapped up. Inside you'll have something sweet.

How to get hamantaschen to stay closed? ›

So… how do you shape hamantaschen? The trick to keeping hamantaschen closed is to fold! Fold down one third of the circle covering a portion of the filling. Then, fold the next third down, overlapping the first third.

Can you eat hamantaschen year round? ›

[%image reference-image float=right width=400 caption="Any day is a good day to make hamantaschen."] Luckily, hamantaschen, like matzo-ball soup, are technically a holiday food but appropriate to enjoy at any time of year.

What is the best way to thicken jelly? ›

  1. Citrus peels. Citrus peels—especially the white part, or pith—are naturally packed with pectin. ...
  2. Cornstarch. Cornstarch is a natural thickener that works as a seamless substitute for pectin.
  3. Gelatin. Gelatin is a viable option for non-vegans or non-vegetarians.
  4. Extra sugar.
Mar 29, 2022

What ingredient thickens jelly? ›

Pectin is a mucilaginous substance (gummy substance extracted from plants), occurring naturally in pears, apples, quince, oranges, and other citrus fruits. It is used as the gelling agent in traditional jams and jellies.

How to thicken jam for pastry filling? ›

Optional: in a little cup mix 1 tablespoon of cornstarch and 2 tablespoons of water, then pour into bubbling fruit stuff stirring constantly for another two minutes.

How can I make my jelly firmer? ›

For each quart of jam or jelly to be fixed, mix 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup water or white grape juice, 2 tablespoons bottled lemon juice, and 4 teaspoons powdered pectin in a large pot. So, if you made a batch of jam and have 10 eight-ounce jars that didn't set, that would be an average batch (10 cups or 2.5 quarts).

References

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Article information

Author: Dr. Pierre Goyette

Last Updated:

Views: 6519

Rating: 5 / 5 (70 voted)

Reviews: 85% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Dr. Pierre Goyette

Birthday: 1998-01-29

Address: Apt. 611 3357 Yong Plain, West Audra, IL 70053

Phone: +5819954278378

Job: Construction Director

Hobby: Embroidery, Creative writing, Shopping, Driving, Stand-up comedy, Coffee roasting, Scrapbooking

Introduction: My name is Dr. Pierre Goyette, I am a enchanting, powerful, jolly, rich, graceful, colorful, zany person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.