A cookie called ears, with a subtle irony characteristic of the Jewish people, marks a happy event - the salvation of the Jews from extermination by the cruel and treacherous Aman, the vizier of the Persian king. Every year, marking this date, Jewish families decided to bake cookies, in shape, really resembling an ear. Purim is not a religious holiday, but there are rules in Jewish cuisine that are strictly enforced at any time of the year.
Since we will talk about sweet pastries, where some products of animal origin are used for the test (eggs, butter, sour cream, milk), just in case, note that these products must be kosher. In particular, an ordinary chicken egg should have the correct conical shape.
If you decide to treat Jewish friends with cookies, and they refuse the offered treats, take this with understanding: although not all Jewish communities observe Torah laws very strictly, it is forbidden to take food from the hands of those who do not observe them.
Aman's ears - recipe and technology for the preparation of cookies
Of course, strict religious rules do not prohibit everyone to try the traditional baking of Jewish cuisine. If there are no people of Jewish nationality in the circle of acquaintances, then you can safely bake cookies from ordinary fresh chicken eggs.
Jewish cuisine is divided territorially. The traditional cookies of Sephardic Jews living in the Middle East are prepared from biscuit dough stuffed with poppy seeds, nuts and dried fruits. Such a choice of filling is a memory and a tribute to the wife of the Persian king, the Jewish woman Esther, who ate only nuts and dried fruits in her husband’s palace, since there was no other kosher food in the king’s palace. Other filling options are jam, fresh fruit. These options of fillings are allowed in the cuisine of Ashkenazi Jews living in Europe and America.In addition, Israeli and Odessa cuisines stand out, partly absorbing the traditions of Turkish and Iranian cuisine, since the Jewish and Muslim religions have some similarities in terms of eating.
We won’t go further into national features, because what has been said is enough to understand the direction that you need to follow in preparing cookies, “Haman’s ears,” or “Haman’s pockets,” according to the version of the Jews that is widespread in Europe.
The biscuit dough for cookies is prepared according to a special recipe, since it must have a sufficiently dense consistency so that it is convenient to roll out the layers and cut circles. This dough, moreover, with the addition of oil, is very similar to the recipe for shortcrust pastry. On the eve of Purim, all pastry shops in Israel and in the Jewish quarters of Western countries are filled with traditional pastries. There you can also meet festive puff pastry cookies.
There is also a version of the “ears” prepared using yeast, and yeast dough is known to be used more often for pies. Note that yeast is not used in traditional Jewish cuisine, as it is believed that they do not apply to kosher (pure) products. So, the “ears” of yeast dough are the European version of pies, which has only a similar name and method of sculpting products with Jewish cuisine.
All these variations of baking "Haman's Ears" suggest that, in essence, the recipe for this cookie is no different from other sweets, if you do not take into account its national and religious characteristics. Love homemade cookies - cook it as you like, well, and of course, you can choose for this the recipes of the Jewish holiday of Purim to get acquainted with the taste of national cuisine. Note that no special products and culinary tricks are required for this.
1. "Haman's Ears" from shortcrust pastry with figs and almond flakes
Ingredients:
Fig jam 450 g
Almonds 100 g
Sugar 130 g
Eggs, canteens 4 pcs.
Oil 250 g
Condensed milk 125 g
Sugar 230 g
Premium flour 850 g
Salt 10 g
Baking powder 25 g
Essence, zest, vanilla, cinnamon to taste
Icing sugar - for powder
Cooking:
Beat soft butter and condensed milk until creamy. In parallel, beat eggs with sugar in a separate bowl. Combine both liquid masses. Separate part of the flour on the powder of the working surface (10%). Combine the rest of the flour with salt, baking powder, dry flavors. Add liquid extracts to the butter-egg mixture. Combining the liquid and dry parts, quickly knead the dough. So that the dough does not heat up, it is convenient to knead it in the combine. The consistency should be soft, convenient for the formation of semi-finished products using recesses.
Put the finished dough in a bag, put it in the refrigerator for an hour. Combine thick jam with almond flakes. Prepare the work surface in advance by sprinkling it with flour, and also sprinkle flour with a baking tray. Shortcrust pastry should be baked only in a preheated oven (200-230 ° C).
Roll out a layer of dough (0.5 cm), make sure that the thickness is the same. With a glass or a special recess for cookies, cut circles with a diameter of 8-10 cm. Put about half a tablespoon of the filling in the center of each piece. Pinch the edges of the circles tightly, forming triangles with a filling in the center of each cookie.
Place cookies on a baking sheet so that it does not come into contact with each other as a result of raising the dough during baking. Baking time depends on the size of the semi-finished products. At a given temperature and volume of cookies, it is no more than 10 minutes. Products should lightly brown. When the cookies have cooled, sprinkle the powder through a sieve.
2. "Haman's Ears" from fresh puff pastry with poppy seeds, dried fruits and honey
Ingredients:
Sour cream (25%) 180 g
Sugar 200 g
Soda 15 g
2 eggs
Cinnamon
Salt
Flour 800 g
Margarine 300 g
Poppy 200 g
Milk 250 ml
Honey 100 g
Raisins, dried apricots 200 g
Cooking:
Combine sour cream and eggs in a deep bowl, beat with a blender. Beat margarine with sugar separately until creamy. Mix flour with salt, soda and cinnamon. Add to the liquid mixture of sour cream and eggs. Thoroughly mix the mixture to a plastic consistency. Place the dough in the refrigerator for an hour. Then roll out very thinly, and grease each layer with butter cream, fold in half, cover again with a layer of margarine, whipped with sugar, and fold the layer in half again. Remove the dough prepared in this way again in the refrigerator.
In the meantime, work on the filling. Wash the poppy, pour over boiling water and drain the water through a sieve and put in boiling milk. Cook slowly until the poppy swells and the milk evaporates. Add steamed dried fruits and honey to this mass. Grind the filling with a blender or scroll through a meat grinder.
Now roll out the dough, cut the mugs as described in the first recipe, mold the semi-finished products stuffed with poppy seeds and dried fruits. Bake at medium temperature. To give the products a beautiful appearance, beat an egg with a spoonful of sugar and a spoonful of butter, and anoint the cookies with this mixture before sending them to the oven.
3. Haman's Ears with Nutella and Peanuts
Ingredients:
Shortcrust pastry 1 kg (according to the recipe number 1)
Nutella 400 g
Roasted Peanuts 200 g
Operating procedure:
Make shortcrust pastry according to the recipe and technology described in the first recipe. For the filling, if desired, nutella can be replaced with boiled condensed milk in the same amount. Grind the peeled roasted peanuts, but so that pieces of it are felt in the filling. The manufacture of semi-finished products and the technology of baking are absolutely repeated, as in recipe No. 1.
4. "Haman's ears" from biscuit cream dough with jam from plums
Products:
Flour 650 g
Oil 180 g
Eggs 3 pcs.
Sugar 120 g
Plum jam 450 g
Salt and vanillin to taste
Cooking method:
Beat butter with sugar to a creamy consistency at high speed. Drive one egg at a time. Combine the flour with salt and vanilla, having previously separated from the total mass of 100 g, onto a powder of the surface and rolling out the dough. Change the nozzle in the combine, and continue to knead the dough, reducing the speed to medium speed. The dough should be moderately soft and dense. Keep it in the cold if the oil has melted too much. Try to work with him quickly, and the temperature in the kitchen should not be higher than 18-20 ° С. If the dough is not well formed, add a little flour. Make cookies as described in previous recipes.
Ready-made semi-finished products immediately bake at 180 ° C.
5. "Haman's ears" from cottage cheese pastry with dried apricots and orange syrup
Product Composition:
Fat cottage cheese 600 g
Oil 150 g
Sugar 200 g
Vanilla powder
Salt
Baking powder
Flour 900 g
4 eggs
Dried apricots for filling 500 g
Orange syrup 150 g
Order of preparation:
Grind dried apricots through a meat grinder or using a harvester, combine with citrus syrup, boil for 3-5 minutes and cool. The filling should be thick, so if necessary, add a spoonful of corn starch to it during cooking.
In the bowl of the harvester, put in fat homemade cottage cheese, butter and 3 eggs. Beat the mass thoroughly at high speed. Sift the flour, leaving 10% of it, to form cookies. Combine the rest of the flour with vanilla, salt and baking powder. Add to the whipped curd mass, replacing the nozzle and reducing the speed of whipping to a minimum speed.
Form the “ears” by rolling out the chilled dough with a sausage and cutting into small portions: from each piece of dough, roll out a thin and round flat cake, put the filling in the center and fashion a triangle. The center of the triangle should remain open. Put cookies on a baking sheet, brush with a beaten egg. Bake at 170 ° C until golden brown.
6. "Haman's ears" with halva and nuts
Ingredients:
Margarine 250 g
Sour cream 200 g
Soda 20 g
Salt 15 g
Sugar 150 g
Flour 1.1-1.2 kg
Egg 1 pc.
Halva 700 g
Peanuts 250 g
Chocolate 200 g
Vanillin, rum essence
Cooking:
From halva, grated chocolate and toasted peanuts, prepare the filling by combining the ingredients and grinding them with a blender.
Pour the sifted flour onto the desktop, chop the cold margarine in it with a knife, preparing fatty flour crumbs. Collect the mass with a slide, make a recess in it, add the egg, sour cream, sugar, salt and baking powder. Knead the plastic dough.
Then roll it out in a thin layer, dividing into 2-3 parts. When working with one part, keep the rest of the dough in the refrigerator so that it retains a plastic consistency: the melted fat will not allow you to form a beautiful cookie.
Roll out the dough into thin layers, cut the circles and form a triangular cookie, putting the prepared filling in the center of each of them. Bake in a preheated oven, check readiness with a bamboo stick.
Haman's Ears - Useful Cooking Tips
To make sand products soft and crumbly, add at least 25% fat in relation to the total weight of the dough.
Shortbread dough must be prepared very quickly so as to prevent the melting of fat during its preparation and molding of confectionery. If the fat starts to separate during rolling, put the dough in the cold for a while, and then continue to work with it.
Before baking sand products, be sure to warm the oven to the desired temperature: if the semi-finished products are placed in a cold cabinet, they will melt, lose their shape, and the cookies turn out to be stiff and tightened.
