Tag Archives: purim

Hamantashen for dummies

I don’t like jelly hamantashen (Yidish המן־טאַשן; in Hebrew Oznei-Haman / אוזני המן). Those are for sissies. But everywhere you go, that’s the only flavor!

What I really really really like, and this should not come as a surprise to long time readers, are the mohn aka poppy seed ones. It was time for me to take matters into my own inept cooking hands! And I capture it here for all posterity and because I sort of made it up as I went but want to remember some details for next year.

My beautiful and tasty hamantashen. Black is poppy seed, brown is Nutella. The ugly and tasty ones not depicted.

Ingredients

Instructions

To make the poppy seed filling:
Grind a bunch of poppy seed in a coffee grinder until you think it’s enough. Melt a bunch of butter (I did like half a bar) in the microwave. Then add the poppy seed. Finally add sugar. How much? If you are not an experienced baker, then imagine an amount that sounds like a crap load. Add twice as much. Mix it until you have a paste.

To make the dough:
Take out the pre-made pie crust, unroll it, use a cup to make circular cutouts. Roll the remaining dough then make more holes. Repeat until you have no more dough.

To make the cookies:
This is the hardest part. Using a teaspoon, put a bit of filling in the middle of each circle. Fight your instincts to add lots of poppy seed because you love it: it it makes the things behave like Shrinky Dinks when in the oven.
Fold it into a triangle, leaving a little window to showcase the black gold. Make sure to squeeze the corners real tight or more Shrinky Dinks!
And don’t forget to make a few with the Nutella for your snotty little kids who should know better.
Use a brush to cover the hamantashen with egg so they come out nice and shiny.

The chef in action.

Bake
Put the hamantashen on a tray on top of parchment paper. Or don’t use the paper. I don’t know. But I did and it worked out.
Bake at 400 ℉ for about 10 minutes.
I highly recommend waiting for them to cool down before eating.

Make sure to not over do it with the filling and squeeze those corners tight or your hamantashen will blossom in unexpected ways.

Darth Ilan

Ilan dressed up for Purim as the Dark Lord of the Sith himself: Darth Vader. Whenever I would ask him “Where’s Darth Vader?” he would look down and point at his costume while breathing heavily.

I couldn’t be prouder.

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This was the least bad photo with the helmet, which lasted on for the duration of this photo.

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Off-frame: the kid that took the ball as the victim of a force choke.

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In his home planet environment.

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Ominous.

Apologies for the shoddy video work: I had to stay close and hold him because he’s standing on a shaky toy rail while recording with the other hand.

 

Purim 2015

With the 10th Annual Kosher Chili Cookoff and the Purim Carnival both happening on the same day at the JCAA, we knew we had to come up with a special costume.

So after lots and lots of deliberation, Ilán and I settled on the classic crowd pleaser: The Ugly Nun and The Ugly Nun mini. Turns out Ilán has managed to put on a lot of weight since he was a week old without really growing much hair. This forced us to create a brand new The Ugly Nun costume. Fortunately, mine still fits.

Unlike every other day of his short life, Ilán decided to actually sleep in that day. That means we missed the costume contest (we were a shoe in for first prize, I mean, look at me) and missed eating chili too! (whatever, it’s kosher chili, can’t be that great).

Too bad, we’ll need to dress up the same next year. And since this blog is like Playboy and people come for the photos and not the articles, here you go:

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Left: The Ugly Nun. Right: The Ugly Nun mini

 

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Blinking contest. He won.

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Believe it or not, women find The Ugly Nun irresistible. Here’s proof.