No dense, heavy hamantaschen here! This recipe yields beautiful vegan hamantaschen with a buttery, soft dough that can be customized with your choice of vegan filling.
Hamantaschen are triangle-shaped cookies that are eaten on the Jewish holiday of Purim. They were traditionally made with a yeasted dough and filled with fruit-based or poppy seed fillings.
I've always found the traditional dough to be very dense and heavy, so I was thrilled to adapt this recipe that uses a vegan butter dough. These vegan hamantaschen are soft yet chewy, just the right amount of sweet, and the perfect vehicle for your favorite fillings. Adapted from Shannon Sarna's excellent recipe for basic (non-vegan) hamantaschen in Modern Jewish Baker, these cookies are easy to make and delicious.
How to make the vegan hamantaschen
Gather your ingredients:
- Vegan butter
- Granulated sugar
- Commercial egg replacer, such as Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Egg Replacer
- Non-dairy milk
- Vanilla extract
- Lemon juice
- All-purpose flour
- Baking powder
- Salt
- Jam or other filling
Make the Dough
Prepare your vegan egg according to package instructions, and set aside. In a large bowl, use a hand mixer to beat the butter and sugar together until creamy. Add the vegan egg, non-dairy milk, vanilla extract, and lemon juice, and mix thoroughly.
In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and beat until a soft dough forms.
Gently pat the dough into a ball, wrap with plastic wrap or place in an airtight container, and chill for at least 1 hour (or up to 24).
Shape and Fill the Vegan Hamantaschen
Cover two cookie sheets with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Remove the vegan hamantaschen dough from the fridge and transfer to a lightly floured surface. Roll out the dough to about ¼" thick, sprinkling with more flour if needed to keep the dough from sticking to the rolling pin. Press a round cookie cutter (I use one that is 2" in diameter) into the dough and place the cutouts on the cookie sheet.
Fill each round with ½ - ¾ teaspoon of filling, such as fruit jam, vegan hazelnut-chocolate spread, chocolate-tahini spread, poppy seed filling, or another favorite filling (thick, sugary fillings work best).
Fold the left side of the circle over towards the filling, then do the same with the right side to form a point at the top. Fold up the bottom edge and tuck the bottom right corner under the right side, then pinch each corner of the vegan hamantaschen to seal it. This method of folding and pinching will help the hamantaschen retain their shape in the oven and avoid the dreaded filling explosion.
Place the cookie sheet into the freezer for at least 10 minutes. Preheat the oven to 400º F.
Bake the hamantaschen for about 10 minutes, until golden brown.
Storage
The vegan hamantaschen will stay fresh for 2-3 days in an airtight container at room temperature.
Tips
Make sure to follow the instructions for folding and pinching the hamantaschen, as well as freezing them prior to baking, so that your hamantaschen stay intact. Thicker, more sugary fillings also tend to work better, so I recommend avoiding jam that is thin or runny.
Vegan Hamantaschen
Ingredients
- ½ cup vegan butter (softened)
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 1 vegan egg (using commercial egg replacer, such as Bob's Red Mill)
- 1 tablespoon + 2 teaspoons non-dairy milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 1.5 cups + 2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- Vegan fillings
Instructions
- Prepare your vegan egg according to package instructions, and set aside.
- In a large bowl, use a hand mixer to beat the vegan butter and sugar together until creamy. Add the egg replacer, non-dairy milk, vanilla extract, and lemon juice, and mix well.
- In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and beat until a soft dough forms.
- Gently pat the dough into a ball, wrap with plastic wrap or place in an airtight container, and chill for at least 1 hour (or up to 24 hours).
- Cover two cookie sheets with parchment paper or a silicone mat.
- Remove the dough from the fridge and transfer to a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into two parts. Roll out the first part to about ¼" thick, sprinkling with more flour if needed to keep the dough from sticking to the rolling pin.
- Press a round cookie cutter (about 2" in diameter) into the dough and place the cutout onto the cookie sheet. Repeat until you have used all of the dough (you can re-roll the remaining scraps until all of the dough is used).
- Repeat with the second piece of dough.
- Place about ½ - ¾ teaspoon of filling, such as fruit jam, vegan hazelnut-chocolate spread, or poppy seed filling, into the center of each round.
- For each round, fold the left side of the circle over towards the filling, then do the same with the right side to form a point at the top. Fold up the bottom edge and tuck the bottom right corner under the right side, then pinch each corner of the hamantaschen to seal it.
- Place the cookie sheet into the freezer for at least 10 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400°F.
- Bake the hamantaschen for about 10 minutes, until the edges are golden. Allow them to rest on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes, before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Eric
These are so amazing! I was skeptical about how they would be, but I was so happy with how they turned out. We have an egg allergy in the family, so these mean we can give EVERYONE a treat for Purim this year!
The Modern Knish
So glad these worked out for you!