Spring Traditions ! Everyone has them. All cultures across the world have a festival or a holiday to celebrate in spring. The warming up of the earth, reawakening of the forests, trees and rebirth of flowers and leaves. The promise of things to come and the lengthening of the days just fills people with hope.
For my family the traditional spring holiday is the Navreh, the New Year. However we don’t have any cookies associated with the holiday. There is lot of food, a lot of family time, and new clothes. But sadly no cookies! So I borrowed the idea of Lemon Hamenstachen from the Jewish Holiday, Purim. Purim is considered to be one of the most fun Holidays in Judaism. And who better to teach me the ins and outs of a traditional Jewish cookie than my friend, Abbe who is the author of This is How I Cook a creative and unique blog. Read her fun post on Hamantaschen and get interesting facts about the origin of the cookies and how not to make them. And don’t miss Abbe’s Yiddish dictionary at the end of her post. It’s FUN.
Abbe demonstrating the shaping of the Hamentaschen
I mentioned to Abbe on Facebook that my next cookie on ‘to make’ list was the Hamantaschen and she immediately invited me over to make a batch with her. We spent an afternoon baking all kinds of Hamantaschen including the traditional poppy seed one. Abbe made the poppy seed filling as I was cutting the cookies! Like magic it appeared on the counter for filling! YUM. Then she taught me how to shape them. And then, folks, we made the most delicious savory hamantaschen. Actually Abbe did. I was just waiting for them to bake and then to eat.
Armed with the technique, I decided to make lemon hamantaschen, with lemon curd as the filling. Which meant, I needed to start with making a batch of luscious lemon curd and had to keep it hidden even from me. You know how it goes when a thing like lemon curd awaits in the fridge.
So the lemon curd was made and everything was ready to go when I saw another friend Laura Kumin post a recipe for her Apricot Hamantaschen. I immediately fell in love with the buttery flaky looking hamantaschen Laura posted and wanted to give it a try. Laura also has a step by step instructions on shaping the hamantaschen on her blog.
Since I am a last minute person, I didn’t give Laura’s recipe a try because the dough needed chilling and I was nearing the posting deadline. But I have bookmarked it to be used soon. For lemon hamantaschen I used the recipe Abbe taught me and it worked like a charm. It is an oil based recipe, hence really easy to work with as you don’t have to keep the dough chilled.
We all associate cookies with “The” holidays in December, but spring holidays are a great time for cookies also! Whether you are celebrating Easter, Passover, or something else, we’ve found some great traditional cookies from around the world for you!
You can also just use us as a great resource for cookie recipes–be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts (you can find all of them at The Spiced Life). You will be able to find them the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month!
- Chocolate Candy Coconut Cookies from Magnolia Days
- Easter Biscuits from Baking in Pyjamas
- Easter Egg Cookies from Karen’s Kitchen Stories
- Egyptian Date Crescents from Food Lust People Love
- Lemon Meltaway Cookies from A Baker’s House
- Ma’amoul – Date Stuffed Cookies from All That’s Left Are The Crumbs
- Malt M&M’s Easter Cookies from Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks
- Maltese Figolli Cookies from Upstate Rambling
- Peach and Pistachio Frangiapane Hamantaschen from Live Bake Love
- Persian Chickpea Cookies (Nan e Nokhodchi) from Flours and Frostings
- Taralli Dolci di Pasqua (Southern Italian Easter Cookies) from The Spiced Life
- Zesty Citrus Bar Cookies from 2 Cookin’ Mamas
Lemon Hamantaschen #CreativeCookieExchange
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 cups flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 to 2 tsp milk/ water if needed
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 cup melted coconut oil
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 2 tsp lemon zest
Filling
- Lemon Curd Recipe follows soon
Instructions
- Mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt
- Put the eggs, oil, vanilla essence, lemon zest and sugar into a food processor, followed by the dry ingredients and pulse to make a quick and smooth dough.
- If the dough is a bit dry add some water or milk. In colorado, I always have to add extra moisture
- Heat the oven to 350* F.
- Lightly flour a work area and roll out the dough . Roll it out as thin as you can ( 1/4th to 1/8th of an in)
- Cut rounds with a 3 in cookie cutter. Place the rounds on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Collect the scraps of dough and re roll and cut again, until all the dough is rolled and cut.
- Keep the cut out circles covered at all times so that they don't dry out. They will be difficult to shape if they dry out.
- Place 1 tsp of lemon curd in the center of each circle.
- For shaping, I suggest you visit Laura's blog and see the step by instructions because pictures speak louder than words can.
- once you have filled and shaped all cookies, bake them at 350* F for 20 minutes