Hey y’all! Below is my vegan Hamantaschen recipe I created this year for Purim and a little bit about why I love this triangular cookies. If you want to skip right to the recipe, check out the button above.
Believe it or not, I had never once had a Hamantaschen cookie or heard of them before I went to college (I did a lot of Jewish food discovery in college). I was at a Jewish community event to make the oddly shaped cookies when someone there told me “you can’t make Hamantaschen vegan!” Challenge accepted.
My number one tip for new vegans (and vegans who’ve been in the game for a while too): never utter or believe the phrase “you can’t make xyz vegan.” In my 11 years of being vegetarian and then vegan, I have been continuously surprised at how many things I have been able to have vegan that I never thought I could (shout out to Champ’s Diner pastrami and tofu sandwich that brought me back to the days of my dad making corned beef, a flavor I didn’t think I’d have again). I believe you’ll be able to have anything vegan some day.
But I digress.
I wanted to make Hamantaschen throughout college, but I always felt like the vegan recipes I found needed difficult things to find. So I created this recipe using ingredients I already had in my kitchen and pantry so I knew it would be accessible to pretty much everyone. The only slightly tricky ingredient is apple butter, which you can find in the grocery store near either the apple sauce or the jams and jellies. The recipe will also work with apple sauce, but you may need to adjust the amount of flour used to compensate for the higher level of liquid in the apple sauce compared to apple butter.
There’s a few skills you’ll be using/learning in this recipe:
- Using a rolling pin and evenly rolling out dough to a specific thickness (a skill I very much still struggle with!)
- If you use the apple sauce substitute, using your intuition as you compensate for the liquid by adding more flour
- Shaping cookies as you fold the circular cut-outs into triangles around your filling
Vegan Hamantaschen
Equipment
- Rolling Pin
- baking sheet
- parchment paper
- spatula
- cooling rack
Ingredients
- 2.75 cups flour
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1.5 cups vegan butter softened to room temperature
- .25 cups apple butter*
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- raspberry jam (or other filling)**
Instructions
- Add the butter to a bowl or stand mixer. Cream on high until smooth using a hand mixer or the whisk attachment for the stand mixer. Scape the sides as needed.
- Mix the powdered sugar and flour in a separate bowl using a whisk or fork to create the dry mix.
- If using a stand mixer, switch to the beater. In the bowl, mix by hand with a whisk or rubber spatula. Slowly add the dry mix to the butter by the spoonful until fully incorporated.
- Once the butter and dry mix have begun to form a dough, add the apple butter and vanilla extract and mix in.
- Once all of the ingredients have formed a dough, place half the dough on a lightly floured sheet of parchment paper. Sprinkle a bit of flour on top of the dough and place another sheet on top. Roll out the dough to approximately 1/8-1/4 inch thick. Repeat with the other half of the dough.
- Let the dough sit for 1 hour in the fridge.
- Remove half of the dough from the fridge and preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
- Using a circular cookie cutter, cup, or lid of a jar, cut circles out of the dough. They should be approximately 2-2.5 inches in diameter. Transfer the circles to a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
- When you've cut as many circles as you can manage, reroll your dough and finish cutting the circles. Repeat with the other half of the dough.
- Spoon a teaspoon of your filling into the center of the circles.***
- Fold the ends of the circle up to create a triangle shape around the filling. Fold the edges of each side of the other to ensure the filling does not leak out when baking. If your circles are falling apart, wait a few minutes for the dough to soften a bit and try again. If you notice any cracks in your dough, you can smooth them over by slightly wetting your hand and running your finger over the crack.
- Place the baking sheet in the oven on the middle rack and bake for 15 minute, or until the hamantaschen turn golden brown around the edges. Let sit to cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer to a wire rack to cool for 10 more minutes. Enjoy!