In celebration of both the Jewish holiday of Purim and Kitchen Overlord’s Star Trek week, we’re boldly going where no adventurous chef has gone before. One taste and you’ll want to take these traditional, jam stuffed sugar cookies on a five year mission straight to your belly.
Starfleet Hamantaschen
2 cups flour
1 cup room temperature butter
¾ cup sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp grated orange zest
pinch salt
raspberry jelly
apricot jelly
Start off by creaming the butter and sugar together. Add the egg, vanilla, orange zest, and a pinch of salt. Beat them like you have something to prove in a mirror universe.
Add the flour. Mix it in until the dough becomes crumbly. Get in there with your hands and knead it until the dough becomes smooth and slightly tacky to the touch. If it’s sticky, add a little more flour. If it’s crumbly, add a little more water.
Pack the dough into a tight ball, wrap it in plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge for a couple of hours. You can also leave it there overnight.
When you’re ready to make your cookies, roll the dough as flat as a space amoeba (if space amoebas were around ⅛ inch thick). Use a cookie cutter to cut it into neat round circles. Go ahead and knead your scraps together, roll them out, and cut some more circles.
Put a teaspoon of filling in the middle of each circle. Resist the temptation to overload your cookies with sugary goodness or else risk the boiling wrath of jelly overflow.
As a fan of The Original Series, I used apricot jelly for command cookies, raspberry jelly for engineering cookies, and tried to use blueberry jelly for science and medicine.*
Fold the edges of your cookies inwards so you have a neat triangle. Pinch it closed so each edge is as pointy as a Vulcan’s ear.
Now arbitrarily pick one side to be the bottom. About ⅓ of the way from the right side, push the blunt end of a butter knife upwards. Instead of three sides, your cookies should now have four. Use your fingers to smooth out the edges. You want your cookies to be tall and tapered with a nice jag upwards at the base of the triangle. This is harder than you’d think, because the dough really wants to revert back to a stable, balanced triangle. The colder your dough is, the more likely it is to keep its shape.
Arrange your cookies on aluminum foil as shiny as a 60’s alien costume.
Bake your cookies at 350F for 22-26 minutes, or until they just start to turn a light golden brown.
I get about 2 dozen very dense cookies from this recipe. If you roll your dough wafer thin, you could easily get another six or more.
Serve these to your favorite Kansas farmboys, southern doctors, or green blooded science officers. Never take them to a red shirt’s wake.
* I emphasize the word “tried.” The Blueberry jelly cookies were so dark they looked almost black. If you try to mix blue food coloring into the apricot jelly you’ll end up with a lovely Orion Slave Girl shade of green.
WINNING
The good folks at Out Nerd Me donated a gorgeous Star Trek poster to the lair. It can be yours.
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To win subscribe to Kitchen Overlord’s YouTube channel and make a request for a future Sci Fi Life Hack you’d like to see her tackle. One random commenter will win the poster.
Need more Star Trek Recipes?
Horta Meatloaf
Vulcan Vegan Keema Stuffed Starfleet Insignia
Klingon Blood Orange Pull Apart Bread
Icoberry Torte
Starfleet Hamantaschen
Captain Picard’s Earl Grey Tea-Rimisu
Pain d’Enterprise
Roasted Tribbles
Sisko’s Speedy Gumbo