So You Want To Bake Some Hamantaschen…

My mother, Zora Weidman, made superb hamantaschen. Divine hamantaschen. Excellent at any hour of the day or night. Full disclosure: especially tasty when eaten while reading in bed.

The dough is cookie-ish, not soft, not brittle, and described in the recipe card’s title as “(or roly-poly) dough”—roly-poly being a kind of, umm, rolled-up Winnipeg pastry.

IMHO, my mum’s hamantaschen’s special power was its filling, a mixture of prune, walnuts and citrus peel (likely a combo of orange and lemon) put through one of those large, menacing-looking cast aluminum grinders one cranked by hand. Modern update: I use a Cuisinart, but the mixture comes out a tadgooier than I remember; in Mum’s there were still little distinguishable morsels of nuts, prunes and peel.

Ok, the Sacred, Secret Hamantasch Recipe, transcribed directly from the handwriting of my dear late mother’s recipe card.