Hamantaschen are sweet triangular pastries with various fillings, commonly served during the Jewish holiday of Purim. The name has multiple spellings and origins, and the dough is folded around the filling, leaving it mostly exposed. Fillings include fruit, nuts, seeds, and sometimes cheese, and the texture is a mix of flaky and soft.
Hamantaschen are a type of triangular sweet pastry with a filling traditionally made with nuts, fruit and sometimes chocolate. The singular form of the word is “hamantasch”, sometimes it is also spelled “hamantash”. Other spellings for the word include “homentasch,” which is also sometimes spelled “homentash,” “humentash,” or “humentas.” Despite the many spellings of the name for this sweet pastry, most all variants are pluralized with the ending “-en.”
Although similar pastries can be found in other cuisines, hamantaschen are most commonly credited to Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine and are commonly served during Purim, a Jewish holiday. Purim is a holiday commemorating an event as recorded in the Book of Esther in which the Jews living in the ancient Persian Empire were delivered from extermination. The plot to destroy them was hatched by a man named Haman. There are conflicting stories as to whether hamantaschen was named as a reference to Haman or whether the name is the result of a corruption of existing German and Yiddish names for similar types of pastries.
To make hamantaschen, the filling is placed in the center of a circular piece of dough. The tri-point shape is made by folding the dough around the filling but leaving it mostly exposed. As such, the filling is not entirely enclosed as in ravioli, but mostly exposed as with pumpkin pie. Common hamantaschen fruit fillings include cherries, apples, apricots, prunes, and other types of fruit preserves. The fruits are usually cooked and sweetened before being used as a filling for hamantaschen.
When hamantaschen are made with seeds and nuts, it’s more common for them to be filled with poppy seeds or halva, which is a sweet product made from sesame seeds. Sometimes the pastries are filled with caramel, chocolate or dulce de leche. In some cases, they are stuffed with cheese and served as a savory pastry. This, however, is not particularly common.
One of the most popular aspects of hamantaschen is the variety of textures that occur in the pasta dough when they are cooked. The outside and tips of the cakes are often firm and somewhat flaky. The inside, however, with the filling, is often fluffy and soft. Sometimes hamentaschen are sprinkled with sugar to add sweetness.
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