Blueberry Cream Cheese Hamantaschen

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Poppy Seed is currently kicking up a gigantic storm and I think it’s because she/he a) wants to play on the rocking hippo, b) wants to play in tomorrow’s snow storm in her (his?) new cute puff-ball outfit, or c) knows that Purim is around the corner and wants to party hard. According to this past week’s doctor’s appointment though it sounds like baby’s first Purim isn’t going to be until next year. That’s ok, best to avoid those loud groggers on newborn ears. And best to not have my first big act of mom guilt come from not having the cutest ever Purim costume lined up. Also best to give me more time to nest and prepare and google how to change a diaper!!!

Here is another ode to my number one pregnancy craving of cream cheese! Sure, a poppy seed filling might have been more fitting this year but… I have never really been moved to risk getting poppy seeds stuck in every single one of my teeth in the interest of eating a poppy seed hamantasch over a fruity one. Also eating poppy seeds these days is actually kind of awkward, like I’m eating my child. Which is also the reason why we’ve officially eliminated “Marzipan” as a baby name…. What was I talking about again. Cream cheese! I have six blocks of it in my fridge right now and its sourness just gets the job done. It adds such nice creaminess and oomph to these hamantaschen. Blueberries have also been high on my cravings list so I’ve wrapped them up in a wheaty cinnamony crunchy hamantaschen shell. The shell here is loosely based on Leah’s, which I love because the dough is so smooth and easy to work with and it doesn’t require softened butter or a stand mixer. I added some whole wheat flour, cinnamon, and a little lemon zest since I love those flavors with blueberry (they make them blueberry muffin-like!) and I also played around with using coconut oil, which adds the loveliest hint of coconut flavor. This is a very low-maintenance, yet extremely flavorful hamantaschen recipe.

Just don’t (DON’T!!!) forget the egg wash on the inside. Egg wash will improve the success rate of these keeping their shape in the oven and not exploding open by one million zillion percent.

Chag almost Purim, fronds!

And I’m using Our Family cream cheese here! Which has been sustaining my wild cream cheese craving!!

Blueberry Cream Cheese Hamantaschen

makes about 24 cookies

Ingredients

Dough

2/3 c (86g) whole wheat flour

1 3/4 c (228g) all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon 

1/4 c (50g) vegetable oil or unrefined coconut oil, melted and slightly cooled

2/3 c (132g) sugar

2 large eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

zest of 1/2 lemon

Filling

8 oz Our Family cream cheese, softened

1 c (325g) blueberry jam

Flaky salt

Assembly

Egg wash: 1 egg beaten with a splash of water 

Coarse sanding sugar or turbinado sugar, or powdered sugar

Directions

To make the dough, combine the flours, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, whisk together the oil and sugar. Add the eggs, whisking after each, and then whisk in the vanilla and lemon zest. Using a wooden spoon or spatula, mix in the dry ingredients to form a dough. Divide the dough in half and pat out into discs. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours or up to a day or two. 


Preheat the oven to 350ºf and line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set them aside.

On a floured surface, working with one dough disc at a time, roll it out until it is 1/8” thick, adding more flour as needed to prevent sticking. Cut out 3” circles, re-rolling scraps as needed. Place a 1 teaspoon schmear of cream cheese in the center (I find it easiest to smoosh it on with my fingers) and top with a heaping teaspoon of jam, allowing a 1/2” border around the edges. Brush the border with egg wash and fold the edges up to form a triangle shape, pinching the corners firmly to seal. Sprinkle the jam with a tiny pinch of flaky salt. An optional fun step for added crunchiness: brush the outside edges with egg wash and cover with coarse sanding sugar or turbinado sugar, if using. Place on the baking sheets, 1” apart and bake until the bottoms are lightly browned, begin checking for doneness at 13 minutes. Let cool slightly and enjoy! If you didn’t go the sanding sugar route, you can dust with powdered sugar or just leave them plain! 

-yeh!

photos by chantell and brett quernemoen

this recipe was created in partnership with our family!

salt & vinegar knishentaschen

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It’s like the last day of camp, I can’t believe that the Olympics are over :( It’s so sad. I made a list of things to look forward to now so I wouldn’t be tempted to just be a sad couch blob who does nothing but eat dry granola and watch slow motion replays of Jocelyne Lamoureux’s game winning goal over and over while I get nostalgic and cry. (But seriously, if you have the NBC Sports app, go look up their epic slow motion videos, they’re so cool.) Ok, here’s my list of things to look forward to:

Mackenzie’s Baby Shower! Emily and I are throwing Mackenzie a brunchy baby shower next weekend and there’s gonna be so much cute shit like fruit skewers and tiny smoothies and Eggboy’s building a bagel wall for it. You know, like a donut wall, but it will hold bagels.

Eggboy’s Trombone Concert! He’s playing in the town trombone choir for the premiere of a piece by Eric Ewazen, who was both of our music theory teachers at one point. IDK if he’ll remember us but we definitely remember him and his Jell-O impressions. I wanted to make him a Jell-O salad but Eggboy said no because Eggboy is no fun. 

~Whistler~ I’m busily getting all of my ducks in a row for my Passover cooking demos at Pesach on the Mountain, and also trying to put together some fun skiing lewks so that when I suck at skiing, I’ll at least look stylish. 

World Ice Skating Championships! Haha! You didn’t think that ice skating was over for the season right???? I’m looking forward to a Nathan Chen short program repeat of his Skate America magic, and just being able to watch Papadakis and Cizeron again. 

Yogurt Book Launch! In the last week we’ve gone from planning one local event to three! Two of them are in Fargo, one is yoga related (because who else occasionally calls yoga “yogurt?”) and all three are going to be so much fun. Keep an eye out on my events page for details.

Purim!!! I love a good Purim celebration and also I love Hamantaschen because they are like dumpling cookies and just so darn pretty. And I love seeing all of your sprinkletaschen this year!!! Keep the pics coming, please.

This year I have gone savory!!! And combined my Hamantaschen with a Knish to make a Knishentaschen. I mainly just wanted an excuse to make knishes because it’s been too long since I strolled the Upper West Side eating a Zabar’s sweet potato knish and I couldn’t stop looking at these Zak the Baker beauties on Instagram. And with both a knish and a hamantasch being filled baked goodies, the combination of the two was inevitable, right??

In my knish dough research, I came across a super easy dough in The Gefilte Manifesto, originally from Mrs. Stahl’s knishery in Brooklyn. Flour, oil, salt, water, essentially the same as the simple and satisfying Amy Thielen-inspired cracker crust pizza dough that we make all the time for Friday pizza. So guess what I did? I doubled the dough, made knishes for lunch and pizza for dinner. 2 in 1 dough, what more could you ask for?

The filling here is salt and vinegar potatoes for an acidic twist on your basic potato knish. Love an acidic twist. If salt and vinegar is not your flavor, first of all, gtfo, but also know that you can forego the vinegar here and still get a mighty tasty mashed potato knish. A heavy pile of parmesan rounds all of this out, but you can definitely switch up the cheese or omit it for a dairy-free option. If you omit, sprinkle some flaky salt or other herbs and seasonings (everything bagel seasoning???) on the outside to give it an extra somethin. The bottom line is, these aren’t rocket science and you can play with these fillings as you see fit, you can even add spinach. In the end you will have a hearty, carby handful of delight with soft potato innards and a chewy satisfying crust. 

And I like these with ketchup. Obviously. 

salt & vinegar knishentaschen

makes 12

dough adapted from mrs. stahl's knishery, by way of the gefilte manifesto

potatoes adapted from epicurious

ingredients

for the dough:

1 3/4 c (224g) all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

2 tsp sugar

1 tsp kosher salt

1/4 c (50g) vegetable oil

1/2 c (118g) water

 

for the filling:

1 1/2 lb (680g) russet potatoes, diced (3/4”)

1 c + 2 tb distilled white vinegar

Kosher salt

2 tb (28g) butter or olive oil or vegetable oil

1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced

Black pepper

1 large egg, lightly beaten

4 oz (113g) shredded parmesan

Fresh chopped chives, for topping

Ketchup, optional, for serving

clues

Preheat the oven to 400º. Line two baking sheets with parchment and set them aside.

To make the dough, combine the flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Add the oil and water and stir to combine. Turn onto a work surface and knead for 5-7 minutes, dusting with flour as needed, until smooth and slightly sticky. Cover with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and let rest at room temp while you prepare the filling. 

To make the filling, place the potatoes in a large pot with 1 cup of the vinegar and 1 tablespoon salt. Add enough water to cover the potatoes by an inch. Bring to a boil and cook for 30-40 minutes, or until very soft. Drain and pat dry. Meanwhile heat the butter or oil in a skillet over medium heat, add onion and a good pinch of salt, and cook, stirring, until softened and browned. In a large bowl, combine the potatoes, onions, additional salt to taste, a bunch of black pepper, and remaining 2 tablespoons vinegar in a bowl and mash coarsely.

On a work surface, divide the dough into 12 balls. Roll them out into 4" circles and brush them with a thin layer of egg. Top with a pile of cheese (leaving some to go on top of the knishes) and a big scoop of potato filling. Fold the edges up and over the filling to form a triangle shape, overlapping the corners and pinching them to seal. Transfer to the baking sheets an inch or so apart, brush the outsides with egg wash, sprinkle with remaining cheese, more black pepper, and a few chives, and bake until lightly golden; begin checking for doneness at 20 minutes.

Let cool slightly and enjoy with ketchup, if desired. Leftovers can be kept in the fridge for a few days and then reheated in the microwave or oven.

-yeh!

P.S.

 

Have you pre-ordered Short Stack Yogurt yet?? Get to it! 

marzipan sprinkle hamantaschen

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ok i have come closer to achieving my third my new year’s resolution, the one about having one or two more hangovers than i did in 2016! i had a hunch that it was going to happen this weekend when i landed in louisville and the first person that i met said that the best local food to have in louisville is… bourbon. and then i found myself surrounded by all sorts of super hilarious awesome food writers who were ready for a party and then molly on the range won an iacp award (!!!), and so did ingredient by my new bff ali and so did harvest and honey and food nouveau and alanna's book, and and--here are all the winners! so bourbon was in order. funny faces too. and goofy boomerangs. promises were made to make other people’s wedding cakes, plans were started for a pickle farm visit outside of berlin, it was the silliest, it was the best time ever, i got two hours of sleep on sunday night and it was a-ok.

before this weekend i had never been to a big conference except for the percussion conference that i went to in high school, and i was so nervous about meeting all of these new people whom i have admired and fangirled over for such a long time. but then everybody was *so* nice and welcoming and supportive of one another and it made me so gosh darn grateful to be part of this community. ugh i am getting so mushy!!!! but look i even got a neck scarf selfie with sweet dorie:

so let’s cover some things with sprinkles!!!! purim is coming up this weekend and eggboy and i will be in arizona for the tucson festival of books. so i was thinking that my purim costume could be to just get a tan on our friday hike and be the tan version of myself? i’ll keep thinking... are you dressing up? can i interest you in a schnitzel costume? 

these marzipan sprinkle hamantaschen are not too far off from the bakewell tart in that the filling consists of a thin layer of jam and and a frangipane-type almond concoction. the result is a chewy nutty cookie that also gets some crunch by way of a small sea of sprinkles. i’ve made these now with a couple of different dough recipes— the one from the breads bakery book, which is buttery, light, and almost flakey like a pie crust, and the one from leah koenig’s modern jewish cooking, which yields a denser oil-based cookie (there’s no need to get out a stand mixer) and is graced with some nice citrus flavor. the recipe below focuses on the filling, which can be used with one of those two dough recipes, or your favorite go-to hamantaschen dough recipe.

a bonus: if you have any marzipan filling leftover, you can bake it into chewy little gluten-free, dairy-free, dare i say passover-ready cookies! 

marzipan sprinkle hamantaschen

makes about 30

ingredients

for the dough:

1 batch of hamantaschen dough from the breads bakery book or modern jewish cooking (or feel free to use the dough of your choice)

for the filling:

2 c almond flour

1 c sugar

1/4 tsp kosher salt

2 large eggs, separated

1 tsp almond extract

a tiny splash of rosewater, optional

All-purpose flour, for dusting

lots of sprinkles (I use a mix of sanding sugar and cylinder sprinkles)

6 tb raspberry or cherry jam

clues

Make your dough, and refrigerate it for the amount of time listed in the directions. 

Preheat the oven to 350º. Line two baking sheets with parchment and set them aside.

To make the marzipan filling, in a large bowl, combine the almond flour, sugar, and salt. In a separate small bowl, combine the egg whites, almond extract, and rosewater, if using. Add this to the dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until combined. It always seems like there won’t be enough liquid at first, but keep on stirring until it comes together into a dough. (If you’re preparing this in advance, at this point you can wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for up to two days.)

On a work surface, roll out the marzipan until it is 1/4” thick, dusting with additional almond flour or all-purpose flour if it gets sticky. Cut out 1 1/2” circles with a round cookie cutter, or if you don’t have a 1 1/2” cookie cutter you can simply roll little balls by hand and flatten them into circles. In a small bowl, make an egg wash by whisking together the egg yolks and and a splash of water. Brush the marzipan circles with egg wash and dip them in sprinkles so that the tops get evenly coated. Set aside them aside.

Dust your surface with more flour, if needed, and roll out your hamantaschen dough until it is 1/8” thick. Cut out 3” circles, re-rolling scraps as needed. Brush the tops with egg wash, place a 1/2 tsp jam in the center and then top with a marzipan sprinkle circle. Fold the edges up to form a triangle shape and pinch the corners firmly to seal. Place on the baking sheets, 1” apart and bake until the bottoms are lightly browned, begin checking for doneness at 13 minutes. Let cool slightly and enjoy! 

(And if you have any marzipan leftover, bake the circles by themselves (with or without sprinkles) for about 8 or 10 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned. Let cool and enjoy!)

-yeh!