Too cute!!

Funny! They remind me of the little bubble gum tacos I once purchased for my daughter. I think the bright green "nori" is just fine. It makes the sushi more of a characature of the real stuff.

Jim

Oh, I get it! The treats are wearing their holiday costumes and pretending to be something they're not. Very clever! And they look like they'd be fun to eat.

Chag Sameach!

Sue

Adorable! I made the sushi before, the kids started calling it Fushi, fake sushi! Yours look great! and I love the burgers. have to try it, looks like it'd be a hit with the kids in the nursery school I work at!

My son went dressed as a hamantaschen made of foam triangles when he was 4, was cute, there were mostly Kings and Esthers

Chag Sameach!

Wonderful!

Those are awesome! And must have taken forever. I'm impressed.

We'll make some hamantaschen tonight and tomorrow night we'll hit the megillah reading and join in a drumming circle. It's been a week of festivities at the kids' day school. Yesterday was "Dress like a Harry Potter character" day, today is crazy hat and sunglasses, tomorrow is 2 different shoes and Friday is a short day when kids can dress up in costume and there's a party all day long. Yeah, it's really academic that school of theirs!

These are from last year. THe kids have requested only Nutella ones this year.

AM
The Dinner Chronicles

AM and anyone else, can you post the recipe for your Hamantaschen dough? I can't find my old standby, and I have homemade apricot and prune fillings waiting in the refrigerator. Nutella sounds delicious too.

Gellchom, I think the sushi treats look very real! I also love the "hamburger cookies", I've seen them recently, maybe Parents magazine, and I know I kept the recipe. Did you use Thin Mint cookies, or can you use a peppermint pattie?

Carol, Sam and Ben went to Hebrew School on Sunday dressed as a football player and a basketball player, respectively. My children don't enjoy dressing up for ANYTHING, so there was no way I was getting them to be either King Ahashueras (sp)or Haman.
DONNA

gell, those are way cute!! What fun!

I'm no good at making hamentaschen. They always spread out too much in the oven and don't look like triangles anymore.

It's Purim!!! That means Passover (my favorite holiday) is just around the corner. Yippppeeeee!!!!

"They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat!"

Howling with laughter, gellchom!

I'll try to post my sisterhood's ancient foolproof recipe that they used for a couple of thousand hamentaschen each year. Their secret....corn starch.

Nutella, eh? I use brownie batter cuz my kids won't TOUCH any fruit or poppy seed filling.

My kids feel they are too old for tomorrow nights' festivities and besides we have piano lessons.... :-( they grew up...

Here is our favorite hamentaschen recipe. Lowspark, make these without fear; they do not spread. Believe me; I'm not very good with dough, and even I can make these look perfect. The two Purims we lived in Israel, I didn't have a rolling pin, so I used a Coke bottle -- even that worked. It's a cookie type, not yeast dough. Delicious and foolproof, I promise. My favorite filling is almond.

My friend and I make them together every year -- we always double the recipe. We made them Monday night; almond, prune, apricot, and poppy, as always. My share (that my family doesn't snarf first) will go into shalach monot gifts with the above treats, some candy, an orange, and 2 pennies.

I got this recipe many years ago from a friend named Karen, and we never used another. Last week, she called to say her daughters wanted the recipe, but she'd lost it; did I still have it? It was so funny to realize that I always think of this a "Karen's hamentaschen," but after all these years, I guess I've made them a lot more than she has! Enjoy.

Karen's Hamentaschen

¾ c sugar
½ c butter
1 egg
2 T milk
1 t vanilla
2 c flour
2 t baking powder
prune, apricot or your choice of pastry filling (2 ½ - 3 12-oz. cans total for a double recipe)

In mixer bowl, beat together sugar and butter till light & fluffy. Add egg, milk & vanilla; beat well. Combine flour & baking powder; stir into creamed mixture. Cover & refrigerate dough 1 hour. On lightly floured surface, roll dough to 1/8-inch thickness. Cut with 3-inch round cookie or biscuit cutter (or a jar). Top each with ½ t fruit or poppy or prune filling. Shape into triangles by lifting up edges & pinching dough together to make 3 corners. Leave center open.

Place on ungreased cookie sheet; bake in preheated 350 oven for 10-12 minutes. (Mine often need a bit more.) Remove from sheet; cool on rack.

Make 2 ½ - 3 dozen. (I always double recipe)

Lackboys, I used the supermarket equivalent of a Thin Mint Girl Scout cookie. I am sure a peppermint patty would work just fine. I think some recipes (if you can call it a "recipe") call for it, in fact. The size is the most important part, so it might even work better.

Arabella, they really didn't take long at all, and they were really fun. It would have been even quicker (and almost no cleanup) if I used canned frosting. I made my own this year because even though the canned stuff is cheap, I was grossed out by all those chemicals -- but look at the rest of the ingredients, anyway! How silly of me. Dishesdone, that's what I'd do for nursery school.

The only downside is all the leftover blue, red, and yellow fruit rollups! I had to open 2 boxes to find 5 green ones. I think you could use yellow and red IF you were presenting them on a sushi plate, next to a pair of chopsticks. But in a group of various treats, I don't think it would still look enough like sushi.

My daughter is 18 1/2, but she still loves to wear a costume; this year, a pretty Pierrette dress. She teaches 3rd grade in the Hebrew school, and one of her students dressed as HER at the carnival Sunday. The ultimate compliment.

I am IN our Purim shpiel, so I have 2 costumes from that.

Oh gosh May, I can't tell you how many times I shape them so pretty on the parchment paper, pinch the triangles so tight it hurts, and they STILL lose their shape and flatten out. I haven't figured out why that happens. Yes, Passover is looming behind Purim, though it seems later than usual this year.

Gell, thanks for the recipe, I will give it a try. It looks similar to my recipe, which is a cookie rather than the yeasted version also. I've seen a cookie version that uses oil rather than butter, but when I read through the recipe it looked as if the dough would be WAY too soft to work with. I'm not great at rolling and cutting, so I need an easy dough to work with.

Jessy, what about the chocolate filling I've seen that calls for melting chocolate with sweetened condensed milk? Sometimes my 8 year old even puts a couple of chocolate chips on top of a strawberry one before he bakes it. He's a chocoholic for sure. I love any of the fruit fillings, but never really got into the poppyseeds.
DONNA

Hi Donna.

Here's the pareve recipe I use:

Hamantaschen

½ cup margarine
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
¼ cup orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
filling of your choice

1. Preheat oven to 350Ë.
2. Cream together margarine and sugar.
3. Add egg, orange juice, and vanilla, beating well after each.
4. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt.
5. Add 1 cup of flour mixture at time to margarine mixture, beating well to form dough.
6. Split dough into 2 balls, cover in plastic wrap and chill at least 1 hour.
7. Roll out chilled dough on a floured surface to preferred thickness.
8. Cut circle with round cookie cutter or glass.
9. Place ½ teaspoon of filling in the center of each circle.

10. With a drop of water to hold corners, pinch together 3 corners to form a triangle.
11. Place cookie 1 inch apart on a cookie sheet and bake for 15 Â 20 minutes.

Apple Raisin Filling
1/2 cup unsweetened apple butter
1/4 cup chopped golden raisins
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Stir together ingredients.

Date Orange Filling
1 1/4 cups packed pitted dates
1 teaspoon orange zest
1/3 cup orange juice
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 to 2 tablespoons water (if necessary)
In a food processor blend together all filling ingredients except water until an almost smooth, jamlike consistency. If mixture is dry add water.

Cranberry  Apricot Filling
1 12-ounce package cranberries
2 15-ounce cans apricot halves in light syrup, drained, chopped
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup orange juice

Combine cranberries, apricots, sugar, and orange juice in heavy large saucepan. Bring to boil over high heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Reduce
heat to medium and simmer, stirring often, until filling is thick, beginning to stick to pan bottom and reduced to 3 cups, about 15 minutes. Cool completely.

AM
The Dinner Chronicles

Chag Sameach!

Very cute cookies Gellchom, I especially like the "ketchup" drips. Good looking hamentashen, Arabella.

I'm away on a business trip all week so I'll miss my granddaughter's first Purim. Her mom made her a fairy wings to wear with a dress that has a fairy look.

I had to make my shalach manot ahead of time since I was going to be traveling and it was quite a time crunch to fit it in with meeting preparation for this week. To save time I used preserves in my hamentashen instead of making fillings and I got a little over zealous in sealing up my Hamentashen so the filling wouldn't leak. I didn't have time to take pictures before I left but I took a box with me to share with some of my colleagues. This picture isn't the greatest since it was taken with my cell phone: