Yael's Vegan Hamantaschen Recipe • Jewish Food Hero (2024)

jewishfoodhero
February 17, 2021
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This Community Recipe is Yael’s Vegan Hamantaschen. These iconic Jewish cookies are traditionally served for the holiday of Purim, as a reference to the villain Haman. Yael’s recipe offers us a plant-based version, flavored with citrus zest and date syrup, and filled with a sweet ground poppy seed mix.

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Yael's Vegan Hamantaschen Recipe • Jewish Food Hero (2)

Community Recipes is a recurring feature where we share your vegan recipes on the Jewish Food Hero blog. If you want to share a recipe in this series, pitch us your idea here. This series is all about sharing healthy plant-based and vegan recipes. We are creating a positive community around food and sharing.

Yael's Vegan Hamantaschen Recipe • Jewish Food Hero (3)

All About Yael Cohen

Yael lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where her soul dreams of travel and all her friends and family around the world. Israel, Seattle, and the U.K. have also been home to her, a true Third Culture Kid. She writes about food, life, and Jewish culture at Nosherium, and she organizes events for Jewish young adults. The home she shares with husband and their dog Neelu is full of delicious goodies and nerdy fun.

After growing up in Israel, Seattle, and the UK, each of those places holds dear and familiar flavors for Yael. Sweet rugelach, umami-rich Asian cuisine, buttery scones! Yael loves to create things that her loved ones interact with. Of course, that means foods. But also yarn crafts, jewelry, and judaica. Currently, Yael is renovating her home and planning ways to make the garden productive and welcoming.

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Yael’s cooking style

When she cooks and bakes, Yael feels creative and engaged with the process. She also finds some of the sensory memories very tender and poignant too.

For inspiration, Yael turns to:

Weeknight Baking: Recipes to Fit Your Schedule

Israeli Soul: Easy, Essential, Delicious

Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables

Traditional Hamantaschen

Hamantaschen cookies are folded in a triangle to form a pouch around a filling. The dough is made with butter, sugar, vanilla and eggs. The filling can be poppy seed, jam and other creative sweet and savory options. This buttery, sweet cookie is traditionally served for the Jewish holiday of Purim, as a reference to the villain Haman. Ashkenazi in origin, today these cookies are an integral part of the Purim experience all over the world.

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How was Yael’s Vegan Hamantaschen Recipe created?

This recipe came out of a challenge Yael set for herself! She wanted to make vegan hamantaschen that were like the ones she grew up with. Yael discusses the process on her blog. Her mother’s oznei haman were so much better than the ones Yael encountered at bakeries. And she felt like it would be a recipe people would appreciate!

Yael makes oznei haman/hamantaschen every year for Purim, just like she did with her mother and siblings when she was growing up. She gives them to friends and neighbors in Mishloach Manot, sometimes with multiple fillings. The poppyseed filling she makes has converted several poppyseed skeptics too! Check out her supernatural colorful hamantaschen.

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Key ingredients

Egg replacer – Yael recommends Bob’s Red Mill GF Egg Replacer. You can use an alternative if you wish, such as flax-egg. However, Yael recommends using one with leavening in to give the dough a pleasant texture.

Silan (date syrup) – This is a deeply flavored vegan honey. All the sweet, stickiness without any harm to bees. This ingredient is very popular in the Middle East.