Last night I tried a new recipe for hamantaschen dough, and it just didn’t work out. Fortunately I’d made a decent dough once before, and I realized that all it needed was a bit of orange juice to make it less crumbly and easier to handle. Since I’d already zested my orange, I just cut it in half, juiced it, and used the freshly squeezed juice in the dough as well.
The recipe below would make enough for about 24 cookies, cut with a 3-inch cookie cutter or drinking glass.
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter, cut into small pieces, softened
- 2 egg yolks*
- Zest of 1 large orange
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 2 ¼ cups flour, plus a few more tablespoons for kneading
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- About 1 1/2 tablespoons orange juice
*Not sure what to do with your leftover egg whites? Make almond clouds or cocoa meringues.
Preparation
Combine butter, egg yolks, orange zest, flour, and salt in a food processor.
Pulse until dough comes together; it will be crumbly.
Add orange juice, about 1/2 tablespoon at a time, and pulse as best you can until the dough becomes smoother – at this point it will probably become difficult to pulse because it will have bunched up on one side of your food processor. That’s okay.
Scrape out the dough from your food processor bowl and turn it onto a lightly floured surface. Knead very gently, adding a few more tablespoons of flour, just until the dough comes together and is no longer sticky.
Wrap dough in plastic wrap and chill in the freezer for 15 minutes before using.
amy bakes in the 'burgh 