Rainy day Hamantashen

It's a quiet Friday afternoon and I thought I'd have a quick moment to blog. It's raining outside - nice, real, Jerusalem rain for only the first or second time this winter. That means the wind is blowing fiercely, the lightning is going across the sky, and the rain is rushing in torrents down the sides of the street and across the clay mud earth that can't absorb it as quickly as it's falling. It's wonderful. We're supposed to have this storm in for the next few days which would finally give us some much needed water, so we'll hope that it doesn't just fizzle into sunshine like the last few storms.

Miriam just woke up screaming from her afternoon nap which means I only have a few more minutes until she calms down and we get down to the serious business of making some Hamantashen - the three sided pastry that's traditional for Purim, which is coming up in another week. It's a fun family activity because the kids can help to roll out the dough then take turns folding it up into Hamantashen. I made the dough last night, so I think we'll do the baking in the next few hours before Shabbat rolls in. I originally got the recipe from epicurious.com, and have made slight modifications. The original recipe can be found here, and mine is down below.

Hamantashen!

Servings: Makes 24 cookies.

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons packed finely grated fresh lemon (or orange) zest
2 tsp Lemon juice (or 1 tablespoon fresh orange juice)
2/3 cup filling such as Date Orange Filling, Apple Raisin Filling, prune lekvar, poppy-seed filling, or apricot or cherry jam

Preparation
Into a bowl sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl with an electric mixer beat shortening, sugar, and egg at medium speed until light and fluffy. Add zest and juice and beat until incorporated. Add flour mixture, stirring, until a smooth dough is formed. Gather dough into a ball and flatten into a disk. Chill dough, wrapped in plastic wrap, at least 3 hours and up to 2 days.

Preheat oven to 375° F.

Halve dough. On a lightly floured surface roll out half of dough (keeping other half wrapped and chilled) 1/4 inch thick. With a 3-inch cutter cut out as many rounds as possible - we use various cups and mugs so the kids get to choose the size of the cut. Transfer rounds with a metal spatula to a large baking sheet, arranging about 1/2 inch apart. Reroll scraps and cut out more rounds. Put 1 teaspoon filling in center of each round and fold up edges to form triangular cookies resembling a tricornered hat, pinching corners together and leaving filling exposed. (Pinch dough tightly enough so seams are no longer visible and sides are taut enough to prevent cookies from leaking filling as they bake. if you add a little water to it and scribe into the surface of the dough by the corner before squeezing they tend to stick a little better.)

Bake hamantaschen in middle of oven 20 minutes, or until pale golden. Cool hamantaschen on baking sheet 5 minutes and transfer to racks to cool completely. Make more hamantaschen with remaining dough and filling in same manner. Hamantaschen keep in an airtight container at room temperature 5 days.