GF Hamantaschen

Gluten-Free

Purim returned to our home today with these delicious gluten-free hamantaschen! I modified this recipe from the blog glutenfreebay. I have the link in my list of favorites because there are so many good recipes. For these hamantaschen, I modified the assembly instructions because I didn’t want to wait 2 hours, and found that the dough was super easy to work with and the hamantaschen delicious! (I actually made my first batch of these a few days ago and colored the dough with green food coloring for St. Patrick’s Day. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture, but they were pretty!)

Ingredients:

• 1 stick (8 Tbsp) salted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1 heaping tsp lemon zest
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 1 cup sorghum flour
• 1 cup white rice flour (finely milled)
• ¾ cup tapioca starch
• ¾ cup potato starch
• 2 Tbsp corn starch
• 1  ½ tsp xanthan gum
• ½ tsp salt

• optional: 1 additional egg, beaten well and set aside

Instructions:

1. The easiest way is to use a stand mixer with a flat beater (not a dough hook or a wire whip), but you could do this with any beater or by hand if you’re strong.
2. Cream the butter with the sugar.
3. Add the unbeaten egg, lemon juice, lemon zest and vanilla and continue combining.
4. In a separate bowl, combine all dry ingredients. Add the dry mixture to the liquid mixture slowly, one spoonful at a time, continuing to mix until combined into a cohesive ball of dough.
5. Preheat oven to 350 °F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
6. For each cookie, roll a small piece of dough between your hands until round, then squish flat between your palms, gently using thumb and forefinger to make it a little flatter. The ideal size is a 1- ¼” diameter ball flattened into a 3″ circle. Place the circles on the parchment-lined cookie sheet.
7. Place approximately 1 tsp of filling in the center of each circle. Our favorites are Solo apricot filling mixed with chocolate chips (we learned these from Jeff Schwarz) and Solo Poppy Seed Filling. I always find that jam is too runny, and although I’ve made my own yummy fillings the canned ones are still our favorites.
8. Fold 3 sides of circle together so that the cookie becomes a triangle, and pinch corners and seams to seal. The final cookie should look like a triangle with the filling showing through only at the center.
9. Optional: lightly brush the top of each pastry with beaten egg to make it shiny and help seal the edges. I found that the edges sealed so well I didn’t need the egg, although it looks pretty.
10. Bake at 350 °F for 22-28 minutes or until golden on top with some slightly browned areas (the more browned, the crisper the cookie – but be careful not to burn!) Allow to cool slightly before serving or transferring to cooling rack.

Makes approximately 24-28 cookies.

Change history:

3/3/15 They are good, but not as good as I remembered – the dough seemed a little too dry. I’m going to try the 2nd batch with 1 Tbsp of cornstarch instead of 2. Also R. took a new photo for the recipe. Also we could not find Solo apricot filling but did really well with Solo Cherry, Solo Raspberry, and 778 Apricot Preserves, each mixed with chocolate chips.

3/7/17 notes for next time: Changed the recipe as noted above, and they’re good, but I’m still trying for a little less dry. Next time: decrease cornstarch to 1 Tbsp and increase butter to 1 stick + 2 Tbsp. Remember to make them small, as described – they’re better small, so don’t get carried away and make them too big.

Alternate spellings to make searching more successful: hamantashen hamentashen hamentaschen haman hamen