Earlier today I posted my Dairy Free Hamantaschen recipe. I also wanted to offer a butter-based dairy hamantaschen dough for those who prefer a more buttery flavored cookie. This dough produces a tender, sweet hamantaschen. While many who keep kosher prefer dairy-free cookies (so they can be served with a meat meal), others don’t mind adding butter to the mix. This dough provides a dairy hamantaschen option for your Purim menu.
I like this dough because it produces a rich, buttery, orange-scented cookie that is full of flavor. The dough will work with any hamantaschen filling, and it won’t open up/expand in the oven during baking, as long as you don’t overfill your cookies and your filling has the proper texture.
There are a few drawbacks–it needs to be thoroughly chilled before rolling out (it’s too sticky to roll at room temperature), and it is not as flexible to work with as my dairy free dough. That is the nature of butter doughs; when cold, butter becomes stiff, which in turn makes the dough somewhat stiff and tougher to shape. That said, if you have some experience with baking and working with butter dough, this one should pose no problems for you… in fact, it’s one of the easier butter doughs that I’ve worked with.
Note: if this is your first time making hamantaschen and/or butter dough, I recommend starting with my Dairy Free dough. It’s easier to work with than the buttery one, and the flavor is similar.
You can use any hamantaschen filling you like with this dough; I’ve linked to the filling recipes available on my site below. The key to a good filling is to make sure it is thick enough to prevent running, but not so thick that it bakes up dry or tough. All of these filling recipes are tasty, and they all have the proper texture for use in hamantaschen. I will update this list of fillings as I add new ones to the site.
Hamantaschen Fillings
Rabbi Olitzky’s Chocolate Chip Cream Cheese Filling
For my Dairy Free Hamantaschen dough, click here. To learn more about the holiday of Purim, click here.
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Buttery Hamantaschen
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 teaspoon grated orange zest
- 2 1/4 cups flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1-5 teaspoons water (if needed)
Instructions
- Slice room temperature butter into small chunks and place in a large mixing bowl.
- Add sugar to the bowl. Use an electric mixer to cream the butter and sugar together for a few minutes till light and fluffy.
- Add the egg, vanilla, and orange zest to the bowl. Beat again till creamy and well mixed.
- Sift flour and salt into the bowl.Mix with the electric mixer on low speed till a crumbly dough forms.
- Begin to knead dough with hands till a smooth dough ball forms. Try not to overwork the dough, only knead till the dough is the right consistency. If the crumbles are too dry to form a smooth dough, add water slowly, 1 teaspoon at a time, using your hands to knead the liquid into the dough. Knead and add liquid until the dough is smooth and slightly tacky to the touch (not sticky), with a consistency that is right for rolling out. It can easily go from the right consistency to too wet/sticky, so add water very slowly. If the dough seems too wet, knead in a little flour till it reaches the right texture.
- Form the dough into a flat disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Place in the refrigerator to chill for 3 hours to overnight.
- Before you begin to assemble the hamantaschen, choose and make your filling and have it on hand to work with. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly flour a smooth, clean surface. Unwrap the dough disk and place it on the floured surface. The dough will be very firm after chilling.
- Use a rolling pin to roll the dough out to 1/4 inch thick. At the beginning, it will be tough to roll out-- you may need to pound it a bit. A heavy rolling pin works best. As you roll, cracks may form on the edges of the dough. Repair any large cracks with your fingers and continue rolling.When the dough reaches 1/4 inch thickness, scrape the dough up with a pastry scraper, lightly reflour the surface, and flip the dough over. Continue rolling the dough out very thin (less than 1/8 of an inch thick). The thinner you roll the dough, the more delicate and crisp the cookies will turn out-- just make sure that the dough is still thick enough to hold the filling and its shape! If you prefer a thicker, more doughy texture to your cookies (less delicate), keep the dough closer to 1/4 inch thick. Lightly flour the rolling pin occasionally to prevent sticking.
- Use a 3-inch cookie cutter (not smaller) or the 3-inch rim of a glass to cut circles out of the dough, cutting as many as you can from the dough.Gather the scraps and roll them out again. Cut circles. Repeat process again if needed until you've cut as many circles as you can from the dough. You should end up with around 35 circles (unless you've kept your dough on the thicker side, which will result in less cookies).
- Place a teaspoon of filling (whichever filling you choose) into the center of each circle. Do not use more than a teaspoon of filling, or you run the risk of your hamantaschen opening and filling spilling out during baking. Cover unused circles with a lightly damp towel to prevent them from drying out while you are filling.
- Assemble the hamantaschen in three steps. First, grasp the left side of the circle and fold it towards the center to make a flap that covers the left third of the circle.Grasp the right side of the circle and fold it towards the center, overlapping the upper part of the left side flap to create a triangular tip at the top of the circle. A small triangle of filling should still be visible in the center.
- Grasp the bottom part of the circle and fold it upward to create a third flap and complete the triangle. When you fold this flap up, be sure to tuck the left side of this new flap underneath the left side of the triangle, while letting the right side of this new flap overlap the right side of the triangle. This way, each side of your triangle has a corner that folds over and a corner that folds under-- it creates a "pinwheel" effect. 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. If any cracks have formed at the places where the dough is creased, use the warmth of your fingers to smooth them out.Repeat this process for the remaining circles.
- When all of your hamantaschen have been filled, place them on a lightly greased baking sheet, evenly spaced.
- Place them in the oven and let them bake at 350 degrees for 10-25 minutes, until the cookies are cooked through and lightly golden. Start checking them at 10 minutes; because the dough thickness tends to vary on these cookies they can cook quite fast if rolled thin. In most ovens it will take around 15-20 minutes, but best to keep a close watch over them as they cook to avoid overcooking or burning.Cool the cookies on a wire rack. Store them in a tightly sealed plastic bag or Tupperware.
NOTES
Nutrition
Hi, these look amazing but I was wondering how long the cookies will least in a container after baking. Thank you!
Greetings. Your recipes are lovely, Tori.
Question: when I lived in No. VA there was a bakery called Bread & Chocolate which made the most delicious almond hammentascean but they seemed to be glazed in honey. They were addictive and the color, golden, appeared to hace a sheen. Is my memory visualizing a non- existent additional element?
That sounds so good! I’ve never seen it before, but now I want to try it!
That sounds awesome as a glazing agent. I would think if you took equal parts of honey and water mixed thoroughly then lightly brush the top edges of the pastry it would give you the golden sheen your looking for.
Hi Tori,
We made this and dairy-free hamantaschen last week for Purim. We loved them!
I made dairy-free version with kids together. It is a bit easier dough to handle, so it was
easier to make it with kids. After dairy-free hamantaschen were gone (couple of days :-). I decided to make buttery once. It is the first time that buttery dough cookie held up together for me. Great recipe. They tasted delicious. We used apricot and poppy seed fillings for those. Thanks for the recipe
Happy to hear you liked them both Sasha!
Turned out great! I made the dairy-free version last year and the buttery one this year. The latter dough was more challenging to handle but either way they were delicious! Thanks for the recipes. -Roi
Thanks to you, I had my first successful experience baking hamentaschen! I used different cream cheese dough recipes in the past and while the dough was delicious the hamentaschen never kept their shape during baking. Your dough is easy to make, easy to work with, and tasty – and the cookies stayed exactly the same shape after baking as they were before baking! I used a date filling (just dates cooked with orange juice, then pureed) and the results were delicious. Thank you for a great recipe, Tori! Hope you had a fun Purim.
I tried both the buttery and dairy free hamantaschen and found them both excellent. The dough was delicious and very easy to work with. For the first time in 40+ years ALL my hamantaschen stayed folded. I have a rolling pin with disks to help keep an even thickness (great for pie crusts). It doesn’t have a disk for 1/8″ so I tried the 1/16″. The dough worked well even at this thickness.
Fabulous Ginny! I love hearing that 🙂
I cut the recipe to 1/3 and it yielded about 20 small dough circles, which we filled with a homemade apple and berry jam. They turned out great; thank you!
Tori,
The butter recipe was excellent! You helped me by trouble-shooting. I have been too generous with my fillings and reading about adding only one teaspoon of filling kept my hamantaschen closed! This year, I used cookies and cream cookie butter, so no orange zest in the batter. They tasted like a combination of Oreos and shortbread. None were left. Additionally, instead of rolling and re-rolling the dough, the left-over bits were turned into twists and used for dipping into melted cookie butter.
Thanks so very much for the great post!
Just wanted to thank you. I live in Israel and determined this year to make my own hammentaschen. They are ubiquitous here in supermarkets but I wanted a healthier alternative. I tried your recipe and one other. The other recipe was the first I ended up shaping and baking and they were AWEFUL! I almost threw out your pre-rolled sheets out (I preroll the dough out between two sheets of parchment sheets before chilling to save my poor wrists) and I was SO thankful I didn’t because they came out beautifully – tender dough and lovely orange flavor. My favorite filling was a mix of raspberry jam and dark chocolate. Though date-spread and walnuts was also good. Thank you again for the great recipe. You saved me from giving up on these for life 🙂
Hi Tehila,
I read your recipe review, and would love to know how you made the raspberry jam and dark chocolate hamantaschen filling. It sounds delicious.
Thank you!
Lisha
Can you give the ingredients in grams?
Purim Sameach
does anyone know if i can use salted butter? i dont have unsalted at home
Yes you may, but I would omit the salt from the dough in that case.
I had some trouble with these, though they eventually turned out delicious. I had a really hard time rolling/cutting/shaping the dough. At first it was too sticky, and I couldn’t get the circles off of the counter. Then I added flour and it was too try and fell apart when folding. I made a second batch, and was only successful because I placed parchment paper below and on top of the dough as I rolled/cut the circles (to prevent sticking to counter and rolling pin). Do you have any suggestions?
Hi Jamie, did you chill the dough fully and flour the surface prior to the first roll? If you did, all I can say is that butter doughs take some experience to get right, and it may take a few tries to nail it. After chilling the dough will be quite hard, but it softens fairly quickly, so you need to work fast to prevent the sticking you experienced. And if the parchment paper workaround helped you, there is no reason you can’t use that method in the future!
The filling was excellent. However, it often shrank in volume so the hamentaschen looked only half full. Should I have chilled the cream cheese/chocolate mix before using it? My cream cheese was at room temperature.
That is strange, Richard. I’ve never had that happen with Rabbi Olitzky’s filling before. Not sure what happened!
Hi. Tory, I love this recipe. So easy, yet so delicious. It has the best recipe that I have made so far in the years I’ve been making these special cookies. I made a batch for friends yesterday and am making another batch today to take to friends tomorrow. I thought I would have enough cookies left over from the first batch but not so! They were consumed within a few minutes! I used raspberry and strawberry preserves and they were delicious. Thanks for all your delicious recipes. I enjoy your website.
This dough got kind of floppy when put in oven. The sides don’t hold up as well as my other recipe that uses half butter and half shortening and some baking powder. This recipe comes out crispy and tasty though, just not as haimish. Wonder if the shortening gives it more structure? Make sure you food over the back and pinch, had a couple where the back side fell flat. Overall good result may experiment with some shortening or more flour see if it makes a difference.
Hi Tori! I am looking forward to baking these for a school project this week. I am not a fan of orange in cookies though, would coconut or lemon extract work?
Yes Mackenzie either will work fine, or you can use lemon zest. Just make sure you pair with a filling that compliments the lemon or coconut flavor.
Thank you for posting this recipe. I had never made Hamantaschen before. The step-by-step instructions and pictures made the recipe very easy to follow – even the shaping. I tried both the dairy and the parve, and both versions gave excellent results, though I did prefer the taste of the dairy recipe better.
Hi Tori,
Thanks for posting this. I’d like to substitute maple syrup for sugar in the dough. Any recommendations on what ingredients I should reduce/increase as a result?
Thanks.
Hi Talya, sorry I have never tried this sub so wouldn’t know what to recommend. Good luck!
I’m in a Bible study group that is just finishing up a study on the book of Esther. It’s our last class tomorrow, and we thought it would be a fun treat to have some of these traditional Purim cookies. I’ve never made them before, but I was up for the challenge. They turned out great! The cookie is delicious and buttery, with just that hint of orange. And I used my homemade apricot preserves that I canned over the summer. These cookies are sure to be a hit and I’ll probably find myself making them again because they are just so good!
Great recipe! Thank you for the step-by-step instructions. Will definitely make these again