This hamantaschen recipe with orange and olive oil shines at Purim. Whether you fill these Purim cookies with poppy seeds or prune butter or your favorite jam, these 3-sided filled pastries are delicious all year round!
Another great cookie to try are my date and walnut thumbprints.
For ease of browsing, here are all my Purim recipes in one place.
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This olive oil hamantaschen recipe is a long time in the making. As a child, I remember eating the baked scraps of orange-scented cookie dough voraciously with all three of my brothers. We didn’t even care about the fillings.
But my grandmother’s “recipe” is scrawled on the back of a piece of paper with imprecise measurements. So I have been experimenting on and off trying to replicate that memory flavor.
During one round of testing, I had orange olive oil in the pantry and decided to try it. My grandma always made these cookies with vegetable oil so why not olive oil?
But orange scented olive oil is not a prerequisite. Regular olive oil enhanced by orange zest works quite nicely.
Why you'll love this recipe!
- The dough is so easy to prepare. No hand or stand mixer required! Just a whisk, a spoon and two medium bowls.
- Orange flavor - it's such a lovely addition to the dough, giving it another layer of flavor that seems to meld just perfectly with just about every filling.
- You can make this dough ahead of time, wrap and refrigerate for up to 5 days. So your dough is ready to go when you have time to bake off your hamantaschen.
- If you keep kosher, the dough is parve so you can serve these hamantaschen even after a meat meal!
Ingredients and substitutions
My favorite ingredients in this recipe are the orange flavor and the olive oil!
- Flour: All-purpose flour is what I always use. I have not tested this recipe with any other flour combinations.
- Cornstarch: This gives the dough a little extra crispness.
- Olive oil: I use a mild-flavored oil for baking. Most commonly, I have a large jar of Costco Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil in the house and will use that. Think of your everyday oil, not a super peppery finishing oil. Or use canola or vegetable oil. That's what my grandma did!
- Orange juice and zest: Once you've zest your orange, go ahead and juice it too. And you're all set.
- Eggs: One large egg for the dough and one for the egg wash.
How to make this recipe
I like to break this recipe down into the dough-making, the filling prep, and the baking and forming of the cookies. Obviously, you can do all the prepping and baking on the same day, but you don't have to, which makes this hamantaschen recipe really flexible.
Prep Dough
1. In a medium bowl, whisk together dry ingredients - flour, cornstarch, baking powder and soda, salt. In another medium bowl, combine the sugar and orange zest with your fingers, then add the egg, oil, and vanilla and mix well.
2. Add the wet mixture into the flour mixture to form a dough. Use a wooden spoon or spatula to combine before kneading the dough with your hands. It will come together easily. It may be a bit wet - that's ok.
3. Form the dough into two balls, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least a half hour or even overnight.
Prep Fillings
4. While the dough is chilling and resting, prepare your cookie sheet with parchment or a silicone liner. Prepare your fillings and egg wash.
Form, Fill, and Bake
5. Take out one half of the dough at a time from the refrigerator and roll it out between parchment paper or on a well-floured work surface to about ⅛ inch thick.
6. Use a 3" or 2.5" round cookie cutter to cut out circles and place them on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Using a pastry brush, brush each circle with egg wash and then place a scant teaspoon of filling in the center. Cinch up the dough to form a triangle and be sure to close each corner firmly.
7. Refrigerate the tray for about half an hour to ensure they stay closed while baking. While the cookies are chilling, preheat the oven to 350°F.
8. Bake for 18 minutes. Check at 15 minutes. Cookies should be getting brown around the edges.Remove and place on a cooling rack.
9. Enjoy with a cup of coffee or tea or deliver to your friends in a festive Mishloach Manot basket.
Check out my hamantaschen web story for a step by step visual guide to make this recipe!
Expert Tips and Recipe FAQs
- Store-bought fillings are a great option, but if you want to make your own fillings, check out my recipe for prune lekvar, poppy seed filling or apricot butter.
- Be sure to chill your dough before working with it. If it becomes too warm while rolling and cutting out your circles, just pop it in the fridge for a few minutes.
- Don't overfill your circles and remember to egg wash the interior. Egg washing the exterior is optional.
- Refrigerate your formed cookies before baking, as a last step, to ensure perfectly baked hamantaschen!
- This is a great recipe to get your kids or friends involved. It is not hard but the assembly goes much more quickly with helpers!
Beth's Pro-tip Get all your fillings and a prep area set up. In fancy chef terms, they call this mise en place. I just call it getting organized!
Hamantaschen is a yiddish word, which means there are many transliterations of the actual spelling. Generally, a single cookie is a hamantash and several of these cookies are hamantaschen. But you may also see them spelled without the "c" as hamantashen. Or you might see them spelled as hamEntaschen. And in Hebrew, they might be referred to Ozny Haman, or Haman's ears!
Hamantaschen are filled three-sided cookies traditionally eaten for the Jewish holiday, Purim. On Purim, we remember the story of wicked Haman and the hero Queen Esther who saved the day for the Jewish people.
Many stories have been woven to explain the name of these cookies. One among them is that “tasch” means pocket so these are Haman’s pockets. Another is that the triangular shape represents Haman’s hat.
Not only is there no consensus about what the name means, but there is no agreement on the best kind of dough. The two most common types of dough are oil-based and butter-based. But you will find yeast-based recipes as well.
The dough for this recipe is inspired by my grandmother’s oil-based dough. She used vegetable oil. I use olive oil.
Yes! I would start with a yeast-based savory dough or perhaps store-bought puff pastry or pie dough. I first tasted savory pizza hamantaschen at Breads Bakery in New York City. Be sure to check out my friend and cookbook author Emily Paster's savory hamantaschen recipes. Emily has a vegetarian filling, lamb filling and beef filling.
I bet za’atar, tomato and feta would be a good combination too!
Mishloach Manot are the traditional baskets of goodies that people leave for friends and family during Purim. Be sure to visit my Purim Pinterest board with lots of creative ideas for hamantaschen and other Purim goodies to fill your Mishloach Manot.
Best hamantaschen fillings
That pocket that forms when you fold these cookies is just crying out for a fun filling! (despite my childhood memories of just eating the cookie dough).
The best hamantaschen filling is the one you love! Almost anything will work from traditional fillings like poppy seed or prune (lekvar) or apricot lekvar or unexpected fillings like Nutella, chocolate ganache, or any jam of your choice.
Of course, one of the favorites in our house is our most favorite jam: Gregory’s jam.
Reviews from Happy Hamantaschen Bakers
Reader Raves!
-- Hamantaschen bakers
“Made again this year as Beth’s recipe is a family favorite.”
“Beth, I made a double batch of this recipe last weekend and Bruce and I delivered cookies to friends and family. The reviews are in – make these again!”
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P.S. If you try this recipe, please leave a star rating and/or a review in the comment section below. I so appreciate your feedback! AND find more inspiration on Pinterest, Facebook or Instagram. Signup for my email list, too!
Hamantaschen Recipe with Olive Oil and Orange
Beth LeeIngredients
Dough
- 2 ½ cups all purpose flour
- ½ tablespoon cornstarch
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ cup sugar
- zest of ½ an orange or whole orange (½ if using orange olive oil, whole if using regular olive oil)
- ¼ cup orange juice (use the juice from the zested orange)
- 1 egg
- ⅓ cup orange or regular extra virgin olive oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Egg Wash
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon water
Fillings:
- Use jams or Nutella or my homemade prune butter or poppy seed filling.
Instructions
Preparing the dough:
- In a medium size bowl, whisk together the flour, cornstarch, salt, baking powder and baking soda.
- In another medium sized bowl, add the sugar and orange zest and use your fingers to rub the zest into the sugar until thoroughly combined. To the sugar mixture, add one egg, olive oil, orange juice, and vanilla and whisk until thoroughly combined.
- Add the wet mixture into the flour mixture to form a dough. Use a wooden spoon or spatula to combine before kneading the dough with your hands. It will come together easily. It may be a bit wet - that's ok.
- Form the dough into two balls, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least a half hour or even overnight.
Fillings and Egg Wash
- While the dough is chilling and resting, prepare your cookie sheet with parchment or a silicone liner. Prepare your fillings and wash.
Forming and Baking
- Take out one half of the dough at a time from the refrigerator and roll it out between parchment paper or on a well-floured work surface to about ⅛ inch thick - really as thin as you can roll it without it falling apart. It doesn't have to be perfectly shaped as you roll it, just fairly even in thickness.
- Use a 3" or 2.5" round cookie cutter to cut out as many circles as you can and place them on a parchment-lined cookie sheets. Using a pastry brush, brush each circle with egg wash and then place a scant teaspoon of filling in the center. Cinch up the dough to form a triangle (see the video) and be sure to close each corner firmly.
- After your have filled and formed each one, refrigerate the tray for about half an hour. This ensures they stay closed while baking. While the cookies are chilling, preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Remove the tray, egg wash each cookie and sprinkle a bit of sugar on each (egg wash and sugar are optional). Bake at 350 degrees for 18 minutes but check them at 15 minutes. Place on a cooling rack once out of the oven. Enjoy with a cup of coffee or tea or deliver to your friends in a festive Mishloach Manot basket.
Video
Notes
- Store-bought fillings are a great option! But if you want to make your own fillings, check out my recipe for lekvar or poppy seed filling.
- Be sure to chill your dough before working with it. If it becomes too warm while rolling and cutting out your circles, just pop it in the fridge for a few minutes.
- Don't overfill your circles and remember to egg wash the interior. Egg washing the exterior is optional.
- Refrigerate your formed cookies before baking as a last step to ensure perfectly baked hamantaschen!
- This is a great recipe to get your kids or friends involved. It is not hard but the assembly goes much more quickly with helpers.
Nutrition
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Check out my hamantaschen web story for a step by step visual guide to make this recipe!
Susan West
This recipe is delicious! I made it with apricot jam (Bonne Maman) and Nutella, so it was pretty easy. Big hit with all the generations!
Wondering if I could use the dough recipe to make button cookies? The orange and olive oil combo is so yummy.
Beth Lee
I use the dough to make thumbprint cookies and also just plain cookies - usually button-shaped - cuz that's what my grandma used to do. And we loved them! Also - yay that you made all the generations happy! And thanks for sharing your feedback. Let me know if you try the button cookie approach!