Purim is coming soon, and apart from all the fun costumes, it’s also time for the second-best part of the holiday - hamantaschen cookies. I have shared five amazing recipes for hamantaschen already, 3 are sweet recipes and 2 are savory. Just head to my Purim recipe index to check them all out. This year, however, I am starting my Purim baking celebrations with a classic sweet flavor – apple pie. I also plan on sharing another hamantaschen recipe next week so stay tuned!
Everyone loves apple and apple pie even more so. Why wouldn’t we use this delicious flavor in festive hamantaschen? The apple pie filling is made with apples, lemon juice, sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon.
The dough I used to make these apple pie hamantaschen is the same dough as my date hamantaschen. It's made with only 3 ingredients and doesn’t require cooling and waiting before rolling and cutting out the cookies. For that reason, I started this recipe by making the apple pie filling first. The filling is cooked separately and needs to cool down before using it as a filling.
This recipe is also vegan and therefore pareve (non-dairy).
Additionally, these apple pie hamantaschen have very little sugar in them, just in the filling. If you want to add more sweetness then sprinkle powdered sugar on the baked hamantaschen.
The tricky part with baking homemade hamantaschen is to get them to hold their shape while baking and to keep the filling from running out. But I have the trick for this! To keep the shape of the cookies as a traditional triangle shape, you need to pinch the 3 corners and pinch very well! Check your pinches before you put the cookies in the oven and start baking. You might see that some opened already.
To keep the filling inside the cookies you need to use nonrunny filling and get rid of any excess liquids by straining the filling.
The second part of keeping the filling and shape is to use very little filling - don’t overload the dough with a lot of filling. It all depends on the size of the cookies you cut. I used a cup this time and not a cookie-cutter. It created small cookies so I filled each one with only 3-4 cubes of apple. I know you probably feel like adding more filling but it might cause the dough to open from the triangle shape and the filling will run out. And that defeats the purpose of hamantaschen! I suggest using up to a teaspoon of filling and not more than that if you want nicely-shaped hamantaschen.
These apple pie hamantaschen are so unique from the regular hamantaschen you have every year yet they are very simple to make. With rich cinnamon and apple filling and as a new flavor to create a beautiful mishloh manot (sending portions) for your friends and family.
Let's start making these yummy apple pie hamantaschen cookies:
Apple Pie Hamantaschen
Ingredients
For the dough
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- ½ cup boiling water
For the filling
- 3 apples
- ¼ cup sugar
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- Juice of half a lemon
Instructions
- Peel, core, and cut the apples into small cubes.
- In a wide pan, place the cubed apples and cook on high for 2 minutes.
- Add the sugar, lemon juice, vanilla, and sugar. Mix well.
- Cook for another 5 minutes until the apples start to soften a bit.
- Transfer the apples to a colander placed over a bowl to let the liquids out.
- Let the apple pie filling cool to room temperature and strain all liquids.
- Set the oven to 160°C / 325°F with the fan.
- In a bowl, place all the dough ingredients and mix well.
- On a lightly floured surface roll the dough.
- With a cup or a cookie cutter cut out circles.
- Place ½ teaspoon (or a bit more if you make big circles) of filling in the center of each circle and close the dough to a triangular shape cookie.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes.
- Cool at room temperature.
- Have a hamantaschen and Happy Purim!
Notes
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