Chocolate-filled Hamantaschen with Mexican Wedding Cookie Dough
Beth LeeChocolate-filled hamantaschen will be your favorite new cookie for Purim or for any occasion - even a wedding!With a dough that mimics a pecan-based Mexican wedding cookie and a filling that carries flavors of Mexican chocolate, your taste buds will be happy on so many levels.
Ingredients
Ingredients for dough:
- ½ cup toasted and finely ground pecans a little more or less won’t make a big difference so I just start with a ½ cup of whole pecans, toast them and then grind them up
- ¼ cup powdered sugar
- 2 ¼ cups flour
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt (I use Diamond Crystal)
- ¾ cup unsalted butter cold and cubed
- 1 large egg
Ingredients for chocolate filling:
- ½ cup dark chocolate good quality chips such as Guittard work great
- ¼ cup unsalted butter ½ stick
- ½ cup light brown brown sugar dark would work too
- ¼ cup powdered sugar plus a little extra for sprinkling
- 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 packet Abuelita cocoa mix (each packet is 1 ounce or 28.3 grams)
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon instant espresso
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt I use Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt for everything, to be consistent. If you use Morton’s Kosher Salt (not table salt!), it is saltier so use about half as much though with this chocolate filling, you can let your taste buds be your guide)
Instructions
Make the dough:
- In the bowl of the food processor, chop the pecans by pulsing a few times. When almost finely ground (think coarse sand), add the powdered sugar and pulse a few times to combine with nuts. Remove the nut mixture from the processor and set aside (might be a little stuck in corners of the processor bowl - just use a spatula to get it out of the corners).
- Put flour, granulated sugar and salt into the processor bowl and pulse a couple times to combine (cover the hole so the flour doesn’t splash in your face).
- Add cubed cold butter. Process until it’s incorporated – flour mixture will be coarse and there shouldn’t be any giant lumps of butter.
- Add nut mixture back in and pulse to combine a few times then add egg and pulse a few times more - the dough will come together quickly. As soon as it does and the egg is well incorporated, stop mixing and turn the dough out onto a piece of parchment paper or clean surface.
Roll out and rest the dough:
- Divide the dough blob roughly in half, flatten each half into a disk. Place one of the disks between two pieces of parchment paper and use a rolling pin to roll out to about ¼ inch thick (between ⅛ and ¼ inch). Do the same with the other dough disk and then place both pieces of dough (between the parchment) on a cookie sheet and into the fridge to chill for 20 - 30 minutes.
Make the filling:
- While the dough is chilling, make the filling. Place the chocolate chips and butter in a microwave safe bowl. Melt chocolate and butter in the microwave - 50% power for a minute at a time. Remove after each minute and mix with small wooden spoon or spatula. In my microwave, it took two minutes plus 10 extra seconds at full power.
- Once the chocolate butter mixture is completely smooth and shiny, add all the filling ingredients and mix well. Let this chocolate mixture cool down before filling the hamantaschen. Yields 1 cup of filling.
Form and bake the cookies:
- Remove one dough piece from the refrigerator, grab your 2.5” - 3” round cookie cutter, pull the top piece of parchment back and make cutouts in the dough – as many as you can fit – then remove the scraps and place the parchment with the round dough pieces on a cookie sheet.
- Place a heaping teaspoon of the cooled filling in the center of each dough round. (the filling is moldable so you can form it into a flatter oval/round shape to make it look consistent in each cookie - not necessary but very fun)
- Use your thumbs and forefingers to cinch the dough into a triangle, creating 3 corners, and firmly pinch them closed, leaving a hole for the filling to peek through.
- Combine the scraps and re-roll. Refrigerate the re-rolled dough again and while it is re-chills, work on the other half of the dough from the refrigerator. (Any dough scraps remaining after the "reroll" can be formed into traditional Mexican wedding cookie balls. You can even try making thumbprint style cookies if you want!)
- Pre-heat oven to 375°F. Chill the formed cookies for 20 - 30 minutes then bake at 375°F for 15 minutes. If the dough is closer to ¼ inch thick, it might take a minute or two longer than if it’s closer to an ⅛ inch thick. Each oven is different so start checking about 2 minutes early – at 13 minutes – just in case.The underside of the cookies should take on some color and the top edges may as well. If cooking two sheets at the same time, switch shelves halfway through baking.
- Once removed from the oven, let the cookies cool in place for a couple minutes on the baking sheet then move to a cooling rack.
- To serve, place the cookies on a serving tray of choice and dust with powdered sugar just like you would with a Mexican wedding cookie!
Notes
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- It may seem like a lot of steps, but this is just the nature of hamentaschen. Remember the dough can be made ahead, the filling can be made ahead and once you get into a rhythm, you’ll realize that while one batch is chilling, another batch can be forming and another batch can be baking.
- Many hands will make light work of baking these. And even if you are baking alone, you can fill the “chill time” with other parts of the baking process or just other kitchen or work chores.
- Anytime the dough seems hard to work with, it’s probably just too warm. Pop it back in the fridge for 10 minutes or even the freezer for 5 minutes.
- If you have a hard time removing the cut out rounds or the scraps even when the dough is properly chilled, a dough scraper is your friend! Just tuck it under the edge of the dough. It’s a magical tool.
- If you cinch up a hamantash and notice a crack or dent in the dough or notice that one dough round is way thicker than another, just smooth over the crack or press down the lump. This dough is malleable.
- If you make the filling ahead and it gets cold and hard, just reheat in the microwave at 50% power for at most a minute and check to see if it’s getting warm and soft again.
- If you make the dough ahead (like hours or days) and roll it out as instructed, be sure to store the rolled out dough airtight so it doesn’t dry out. Either cover the sheet pan or store in one of those giant ziploc bags. You can also store it as a disk and roll out later, but it’s nice to have it rolled out and ready to go.
Nutrition
Serving: 2gCalories: 166kcalCarbohydrates: 20gProtein: 2gFat: 9gSaturated Fat: 5gPolyunsaturated Fat: 1gMonounsaturated Fat: 3gTrans Fat: 0.2gCholesterol: 15mgSodium: 100mgPotassium: 62mgFiber: 1gSugar: 10gVitamin A: 181IUVitamin C: 0.03mgCalcium: 13mgIron: 1mg
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!