Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Purim Pastry and other Treats

I love to bake.  Especially cookies.  My current cookie craving is my husband's Aunt Eileen's beautiful hamantashen for Purim every year, which arrived today in a USPS box.  I came home from the gym and jammed one in my mouth and it was divine.

What's a hamantash, you ask?  It's a triangular cookie with filling peeking out of the center.  Old school fillings include prune or poppy seeds, but my favorite is apricot jam.  The soft cookie dough has a slightly sweet and lemon-y flavor, like a very soft linzer cookie, minus the WASP-y name and confectioner's sugar.

I also love that the cookies are a kind of Jewish joke.  They're made for the Jewish holiday of Purim, and the cookies mock the tri-pointed hat of Haman, the villian in the Book of Esther.  Basically, it's a badass cookie that looks wholesome but has a bit of a sly sense of humor.  It's a cookie after my own heart.

Aunt Eileen, I'm coming over for a baking lesson!

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