Every year, for the holiday called “Purim”, Jewish people eat a cookie called a hamantaschen. I love to bake them myself because homemade is always better than storebought.

I’ve been making them for years and I always use the same dough recipe (link here). This is a great dough that’s dairy free, but not vegan since it has eggs. It’s not a super sweet dough nor does it have a lot of fat, it’s honestly relatively healthy (compared to other doughs). I also love all the fresh orange zest, it adds a nice bright flavour.

I made 2 different varieties. The darker one is a homemade blueberry filling. I just cooked down some frozen blueberries with lemon juice, until they got super saucy. Then I slowly stirred in a cornstarch slurry (cornstarch with water), little by little, and continued simmering, until it was thick. It almost had the consistency of canned pie filling in the end. It thickened up more as it cooled down too.

While I was forming my cookies, I realized I wasn’t going to have enough blueberry filling. So, I improvised. I mixed a little raspberry and strawberry jam together in a bowl and filled the rest of my cookies with that. It worked just as well.

The cookie is not crunchy but not super soft either, it’s a nice in-between texture. Since the dough isn’t so sweet, like I mentioned, the touch of jam in the middle adds the perfect extra touch. I’m just very happy with how they turned out.