Ube Hamantaschen

I happened to see an ad for a Purim-themed online baking event. The photo showed a fuchsia-hued cookie in the distinctive triangular shape common to hamantaschen. But there was nothing conventional about the striking color of the cookie.

Marianna Breytman was the host of the event, and it was put on by Jewish&, a program of the Miles Nadal JCC. The recipe is distinctive because it calls for ube extract. I was able to find it at an Asian grocery, but the one I got looked quite artificial, with synthetic colour and flavour.

The dough itself was very soft and sticky, and turned out to be very sweet. The colour was beautiful though, even after baking. We filled our hamantaschen with the fillings we had made for another Purim project from a day before: caramel apple, passionfruit and apricot, and chocolate raspberry.

While the look of these hamantaschen were stunning, using a filling like ube halaya would help them to truly live up to their name.