Jewish holidays are full of symbolic foods. On Rosh Hashanah, we eat apples and honey as a sign of hope that the year ahead will bring sweetness into our lives.

On Hanukkah, we eat latkes. These potato pancakes are fried in oil which serves as the symbolism for the miracle of Hanukkah when the temple candelabra (menorah) burned for eight days even though only one day’s worth of oil was available.

On Passover we eat matzah to remind us of the bread that the Jews baked hastily as they were preparing to flee from Egypt where we were enslaved.

And, on Purim, we eat hamantaschen.

These triangle-shaped cookies are a symbol of the hat that was worn by Haman, who was determined to annihilate the Jews back in the ancient Persian Empire. Thanks to the courage of Queen Esther, a fellow Jewess in disguise, we were saved and, as you can imagine, a celebration ensued. This is why Purim is considered to be one of the most joyous of all the Jewish holidays. Children dress up in costumes and run around with noise makers, much to the delight of their parents (chuckle), food baskets (mishloach monot) are packed and given out to friends and strangers and people gather to celebrate and to retell the story of Purim, all in a carnival-like setting while munching on, you guessed it, hamantaschen.

If you’ve never had a hamantash, you’re in for a treat. These are delicate, flaky, flavorful cookies that can be filled with just about anything that you can imagine. Traditionally, various jams or prune or poppy seed pastry fillings are used. However, you can literally use any pastry filling that you’d like, as long as it’s thick and won’t leak (I usually use this brand). I’ve made them with chocolate chips, apricots and what may be my new and favorite combination of all time, nutella-coconut.

Most often, these cookies are dairy-free so they can be served with both dairy and meat based meals in kosher households. And, although, we don’t keep kosher, I’ve stuck to tradition and always made them that way over the years.

However, I’ve always struggled with the fact that my dough would come out too hard or crumbly, so it wouldn’t hold together well as I rolled it out. Or, they would spread too much in the oven and loose their triangle shape. The result would always be a delicious but ugly mess. I’d show you a picture if I hadn’t been too frustrated to photograph these jam filled blobs.

So this year, I decided to tweak my recipe a bit. I changed the amount of sugar and flour, added a bit of orange zest and used butter instead of margarine. The result is the most flaky and gorgeous orange-scented, buttery cookie ever, and I can’t imagine making them any other way going forward.

The dough is basically what you would use for a sugar cookie, which means that it only requires a few ingredients and is easy to throw together. You can even make it ahead of time, stick it in the fridge and pull it out the next day.

This makes for a great project to do with the kids. That’s especially true this year as Purim happens to fall on a Monday which means you’ve got the weekend to bake and indulge. You can just give them a piece of dough and let them pat it out in circles with their hands rather than rolling it out. And, did I mention that these cookies will last for days in an air-tight container? Make them now and enjoy them next week. That is, if you have any left.

The Dishy Details

It all started with the dough. First, I sifted the flour, salt and baking powder into a medium size bowl.

Then the butter and sugar went into a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. You can also do this with a hand held mixer if you prefer. I ran the mixer on low-medium speed for about 3 minutes until everything was light and fluffy.

I scraped down the bowl with a rubber spatula and then I added one egg, vanilla extract, a teaspoon of orange zest and two tablespoons of orange juice to the butter and sugar mixture. The mixer was turned on again and the dry ingredients were slowly added.

A few minutes later, the dough came together. It’s really important to stop as soon as a crumbly dough forms. You don’t want to over-mix it.

Once done, I dumped everything onto a well floured board, divided the dough in half, shaped each portion into a disc, wrapped each disc in plastic wrap and stuck them in the fridge for one hour.

I then rolled out the dough and used three inch round cookie cutters to make about 30 circles.

The rounds went onto two parchment lined cookie sheets where they were filled with my family’s favorite fillings – cherry, poppy seed and newly whipped up Nutella with a sprinkle of coconut. The trick here is to only use about a teaspoon of filling. Overfilling these cookies will cause them to expand too much and the filling will leak out.

Then came the hard part, forming the cookie into a triangle. This is nothing more than bringing the dough up and pinching the three ends together. Sure this sounds easy and it truly is.

The hard part is getting the ends to stay together and not separate once the cookies hit the 350 degree oven. So, this year I did something different. Instead of leaving much of the filling uncovered, I pinched each hamantash closed until only a tiny bit of the filling was showing.

I then stuck the cookies back into the fridge for about 15 minutes. This helped the dough to firm up and, believe it or not, my cookies held up perfectly to the 12-15 minutes that it took to bake.

I hope that you decide to give this Hamantaschen recipe a whirl. If you do, please let me know what you think, or tag me on Instagram. I always love to hear from everyone and to see photos of any recipes that you make. And above all, thanks so much for stopping by.