Where do you run when the dryer full of the hubby's cotton button down shirts and the oven timer both ding at the same time?
Normally, those shirts would take precedence over pretty much everything - I'd do almost anything not to have to iron - but today the oven came first.
Round one of this year's hamentaschen were baking and the little one was so excited to see what we made that she was unable to stand still, dancing all around the kitchen, shaking her container of sprinkles.
We have been using this recipe for hamentaschen for a couple of years and they always come out very yummy and very pretty, which is more than I can say for the many many hamentaschen that I baked in the years pre-recipe. My hamentaschen would open, all the filling spilling out and making a huge mess everywhere. But once my good friend Alissa shared her mom's recipe, we were good to go.
This should be your go-to too.
If you have been following along for a while, you might remember that I have one child who refuses to eat a hamentaschen with fruit as a filling. So the past couple of years found me attempting Hershey kiss filled hamentaschen, hamentaschen made from chocolate dough and chocolate chip hamentaschen. All of them were okay but never got a better comment then eh, it's okay. And eh is code for I feel bad for you, so I'll eat this, but you know, eh.
I don't like that.
So this year, enter the brownie hamentasch.
I had seen a picture of brownie hamentaschen on pinterest but whoever pinned it did not include the link (very bad pinterest etiquette right there, my friends) and so there was no recipe.
What to do?
Experiment. And lucky for me that it all turned out well on the first try because I only had one box of Duncan Hines brownies in the house - which is what you need to get right now if you want to make these. Go ahead, I'll wait.
I mean, I guess you can use a homemade brownie recipe, but really, why? Josh won't even taste a brownie made from scratch. His motto: why mess with perfection?
To start, make a batch of the hamentaschen dough and while it is chilling in the fridge, follow the directions on the back of the Duncan Hines box for the fudgy brownies, not the cake brownies. Mix it all together and bake it in a 9x13" pan for 15 minutes or so. The point is that the brownies should not be baked all the way, they should still be kind of soupy.
Take the brownies out of the oven and stir the batter a little, just to break it up - I needed to do that because the edges of my brownies had started to set. Let the brownies cool and as they cool, they will thicken.
Once everything had chilled and cooled off, roll out the dough and cut out the circles with a cookie cutter or a cup (I used the colored plastic kiddie cups from Ikea). Using a small spoon (the kind your kids would use to eat cereal - I call that a teaspoon), drop the brownie batter on to the circles. If I was using a real measuring spoon, it would most likely be 1/2 teaspoon.
To learn how to shape the hamentaschen, click here and scroll down to the middle.
Once the hamentaschen are shaped, you can either bake them or add the sprinkles.
To add the sprinkles, pour some colored sprinkles onto a plate. Then fill a small cup with water and using a pastry brush or whatever brush you would use to eggwash your challah, brush some water over each hamentasch. Very carefully, pick up each hamentasch and dip each of the three sides into the sprinkles and then bake.
Be sure to place no more than a dozen hamentaschen on one tray because they spread and you will wind up with a hamentaschen cake instead of cookies. It happened to me. It's not a bad little cake, just not what we're looking for today.
***
Josh really likes samoas so I figured if I was already making brownie hamentaschen, why not add shredded coconut to some of them too? I know samoas also have caramel in them too but I didn't have any caramel in the house. Can you make your own caramel? I don't know. But that sounds like a lot of work. So we're just going to make pretend that samoas are coconut and chocolate and leave it at that.
Anywho, I added a little coconut underneath the brownie batter in about twelve of the hamentaschen - and those are gone. Two of the kids and Josh liked those the best. One kid only hears the siren call of sprinkles so she went for those and my picky, chocolate loving child went straight for the plain brownie, no sprinkles, no coconut hamentaschen.
And me? I'm eating one now, but I'm also ironing a dryer full of shirts. Oh well.
ps Just to recap, three ways to make these:
1. Plain with brownies in the center.
2. Brownies in the center with sprinkles.
3. Plain with brownies and shredded coconut in the center.
Happy Baking!
Normally, those shirts would take precedence over pretty much everything - I'd do almost anything not to have to iron - but today the oven came first.
Round one of this year's hamentaschen were baking and the little one was so excited to see what we made that she was unable to stand still, dancing all around the kitchen, shaking her container of sprinkles.
We have been using this recipe for hamentaschen for a couple of years and they always come out very yummy and very pretty, which is more than I can say for the many many hamentaschen that I baked in the years pre-recipe. My hamentaschen would open, all the filling spilling out and making a huge mess everywhere. But once my good friend Alissa shared her mom's recipe, we were good to go.
This should be your go-to too.
If you have been following along for a while, you might remember that I have one child who refuses to eat a hamentaschen with fruit as a filling. So the past couple of years found me attempting Hershey kiss filled hamentaschen, hamentaschen made from chocolate dough and chocolate chip hamentaschen. All of them were okay but never got a better comment then eh, it's okay. And eh is code for I feel bad for you, so I'll eat this, but you know, eh.
I don't like that.
So this year, enter the brownie hamentasch.
I had seen a picture of brownie hamentaschen on pinterest but whoever pinned it did not include the link (very bad pinterest etiquette right there, my friends) and so there was no recipe.
What to do?
Experiment. And lucky for me that it all turned out well on the first try because I only had one box of Duncan Hines brownies in the house - which is what you need to get right now if you want to make these. Go ahead, I'll wait.
I mean, I guess you can use a homemade brownie recipe, but really, why? Josh won't even taste a brownie made from scratch. His motto: why mess with perfection?
To start, make a batch of the hamentaschen dough and while it is chilling in the fridge, follow the directions on the back of the Duncan Hines box for the fudgy brownies, not the cake brownies. Mix it all together and bake it in a 9x13" pan for 15 minutes or so. The point is that the brownies should not be baked all the way, they should still be kind of soupy.
Take the brownies out of the oven and stir the batter a little, just to break it up - I needed to do that because the edges of my brownies had started to set. Let the brownies cool and as they cool, they will thicken.
Once everything had chilled and cooled off, roll out the dough and cut out the circles with a cookie cutter or a cup (I used the colored plastic kiddie cups from Ikea). Using a small spoon (the kind your kids would use to eat cereal - I call that a teaspoon), drop the brownie batter on to the circles. If I was using a real measuring spoon, it would most likely be 1/2 teaspoon.
To learn how to shape the hamentaschen, click here and scroll down to the middle.
Once the hamentaschen are shaped, you can either bake them or add the sprinkles.
To add the sprinkles, pour some colored sprinkles onto a plate. Then fill a small cup with water and using a pastry brush or whatever brush you would use to eggwash your challah, brush some water over each hamentasch. Very carefully, pick up each hamentasch and dip each of the three sides into the sprinkles and then bake.
Be sure to place no more than a dozen hamentaschen on one tray because they spread and you will wind up with a hamentaschen cake instead of cookies. It happened to me. It's not a bad little cake, just not what we're looking for today.
***
Josh really likes samoas so I figured if I was already making brownie hamentaschen, why not add shredded coconut to some of them too? I know samoas also have caramel in them too but I didn't have any caramel in the house. Can you make your own caramel? I don't know. But that sounds like a lot of work. So we're just going to make pretend that samoas are coconut and chocolate and leave it at that.
Anywho, I added a little coconut underneath the brownie batter in about twelve of the hamentaschen - and those are gone. Two of the kids and Josh liked those the best. One kid only hears the siren call of sprinkles so she went for those and my picky, chocolate loving child went straight for the plain brownie, no sprinkles, no coconut hamentaschen.
And me? I'm eating one now, but I'm also ironing a dryer full of shirts. Oh well.
ps Just to recap, three ways to make these:
1. Plain with brownies in the center.
2. Brownies in the center with sprinkles.
3. Plain with brownies and shredded coconut in the center.
Happy Baking!
