Paleo Hamantaschen Cookies for Purim from The Food Lovers on Vimeo.
Over the holidays my mom put in a request for us to make grain free hamantaschen for her. Hamantaschen is a pastry traditionally served during the Jewish holiday of Purim. “Hamantaschen” is the Yiddish word meaning “Haman’s pockets.” Haman is the villain in the Purim story. Jews eat hamantaschen on Purim as part of the celebration to remember how Jews escaped Haman’s evil plans.
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My mom’s family is Jewish, my dad’s is not. Although I do have family on my mom’s side that practice Judaism, my immediate family doesn’t much. Everyone seems to be married to a Christian! I grew up celebrating all Christian holidays, and lighting the Hanukkah candles. Although I consider myself to be a very spiritual person, I don’t consider myself to be very religious. All of those things really don’t have much to do with this blog, so I don’t feel it is appropriate for me to go into too much detail about that part of my life here. I do really like celebrating where I come from, even if I don’t know all of the stories behind it, or have all of the knowledge of it, so I was really excited to learn about these cookies and take a stab at making them grain free.
For this recipe I had a pretty good feel for how I would make the cookie dough, but the filling needed a bit of research. I learned that hamantaschen is traditionally served with a prune and raisin filling, but that using other berries for the filling can be done sometimes as well. I thought prune and raisin would be a fun filling to try, so we went for it. I cooked the filling with water, lemon juice, and a touch of maple syrup. I allowed the liquid to boil down, until I had a really nice thick filling of plump prunes and raisins. For the dough, the key ingredient to making these cookies work is adding enough arrowroot flour to thicken the dough enough to be able to manipulate it so that it will form the proper shape. If you choose to not eat arrowroot, tapioca flour can be used in the same amounts.
For these cookies we used a fun round cookie cutter that made an almost flower like shape. You can use a plain circle for these cookies, or one with smaller crinkles. Leaving the dough a little on the thicker side also helps when folding the cookies. If the dough is rolled out too thin you will not be able to fold the cookie to make the classic triangle shape. After the cookies were all cut, We filled the center of each cookie with about a teaspoon (give or take) of the prune filling. After that we carefully folded in the edges of the cookie to create a triangle. These beautiful little cookies then baked for 20 minutes, yielding one of the best cookies we have ever made! The texture was wonderful, and the flavor was even better.
If you celebrate Purim, or if you do not, you will really enjoy these adorable little cookies!
Those look pretty freaking fantastic! I will have to make these one day. Also, I just listened to you guys on the fat burning man show and i loved it! I wish you still did your podcast. I understand that you are already so busy though. Gather sounded so incredible listening to you two, now I can’t wait even more!
Thanks for the great recipe! Our backgrounds are quite similar except my dad is Jewish. I grew up mostly with my mom’s side of the family so we had Christmas, Easter, etc. but always lit Shabbat and Chanukah candles. I too am drawn to my heritage and was even married by a hippie reform Rabbi with a ponytail :). I’m going to send this recipe to my dad!
is it possible to sub the arrowroot flour with tapioca starch? is that a 1:1 ratio?
Yes, you can absolutely use tapioca 1:1. Good luck! -Hayley
On the same vein as the tapioca starch, what about cornstarch? I couldn’t find tapioca or arrowroot starch at the grocery store near me. Thanks!
I would use an organic potato starch, before corn starch. We avoid corn starch. Good luck!
Hi, again! Thanks for the reply. I remembered that I bought a granulated tapioca starch from Whole Foods because they were out of the powdery looking one…. Do you think that will work the same? I ask again because it looks as though it has a different texture from the powder in the video you posted!
Try running it through your food processor or blender to make it into a powder form. That may work. Good luck!
Such a wonderful recipe! I just made these for the first time and my house smells like maple and almonds. I love that the dough is so easy to work with even though it has no eggs or gluten in it. These are officially my new addiction.
Thank you!!
I am so excited to try this recipe. It looks amazing and the video is so helpful. I read earlier that tapioca ‘starch’ can be substituted for the arrowroot flour. For this recipe, is tapioca ‘flour’ interchangeable with tapioca ‘starch’? Or should I stick with ‘starch’? Blessings!!!
Hello there,
I cannot eat Almond. What would you recommend using instead of the 2 cups of Blanched Almond Flour?
Thanks!
Thank you so much for this recipe! We just found out our kids are allergic to gluten, eggs and dairy, so it’s perfect!
If your mom is Jewish, then you are also — contact me if you want any help rediscovering your heritage :). I love being Jewish.