Recently I was paid a visit by the lovely Eve who not long ago gave up gluten and white sugar.  We had tea in my kitchen and chatted about things, oh, I don’t really remember what, just that we had such a pleasant time together.  It wasn’t really the content of our conversation (that was great), it was more about making a connection.

Eve emailed me yesterday asking for a gluten free Hamantaschen recipe.  While I do have this one from last year, I wanted to create something for Eve that was every bit as tasty, though maybe just a bit less fussy.  I do love my old Hamanataschen recipe, however, sometimes we want Hamantaschen express, also known as McHamantaschen.

And here it is!  Your drive through gluten free, dairy free treat for Purim.

Raspberry Hamantaschen
2 cups blanched almond flour
½ teaspoon celtic sea salt
2 tablespoons grapeseed oil or vegan shortening
2 tablespoons agave nectar or honey
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon water
some raspberry jam

1. In a large bowl, combine almond flour and salt
2. In  a smaller bowl, combine oil, agave, vanilla and water
3. Mix wet ingredients into dry
4. Chill dough in refrigerator 1 hour
5. Roll out dough between 2 pieces of parchment paper ¼ – ½ inch thick
6. Cut dough into circles (size of your choosing)
7. Make a light indentation with your forefinger in the center of each circle
8. Drop ½ teaspoon of raspberry jam into the center of each circle
9. Fold the dough in to create 3 sides; pinch each of the 3 corners to form a triangle shaped cookie
10. Bake at 350° for 8 minutes until cookies are golden brown around the edges
11. Serve

Yield will be dependent on the size of your cookies and thickness of your dough

I used a scalloped cookie cutter that was 1 ¾-inches in diameter and rolled my dough to approximately ¼ inch thick; my yield was around 2 dozen little cookies.  It was challenging to get an exact yield as my younger son was eating these almost as fast as I baked them.

Tonight, my older son and I sat and discussed the ingredients list and method for this recipe.  He was not happy that I did not have an exact measurement for the raspberry jam.  I don’t. Again, that is really dependent on the size of your cookies and how much of a jam-a-holic you are.

We also talked about the corners of the Hamantaschen.  In some of the first batches I made, the corners opened up during baking.  To remedy this, I pinched them together while still warm and they looked just fine.

In later batches I pinched the dough very firmly and it did hold together during the baking process.  He and I were debating which adverb to use in order to describe how to pinch the dough.  His suggested phrase was, “pinch the dough a little bit more than tenderly.”  That’ll work for me!