Date-Filled Hamantaschen Mark Purim at the Orient Country Store

Shared by Miriam Foster
Recipe Roots: Ann Arbor > Cleveland > Bethesda, Maryland > The Berkshires > Orient, New York 

Miriam Foster and her family moved around when she was little. Michigan, Ohio, and Maryland were all home for different stints. No matter where they lived, her mother Dinah’s apple cake was on the table. “It’s the cake my mom would make on occasions and non-occasions,” Miriam says. It was eaten as leftovers at breakfast, as a treat after lunch, and served with dinner when guests came for the weekend. And it always makes an appearance at the Thanksgiving table. Dinah’s recipe is a variation on one from the iconic 1982 Silver Palate Cookbook. Her copy of the cookbook easily falls open to the recipe, Miriam says. 

Despite growing up around a mother who frequently tucked apple cakes and pies into the oven, Miriam didn’t learn to bake until she was a young adult. At 19, she brought her then-boyfriend Grayson home for the first time. After a meal of Dinah’s macaroni and cheese and apple pie, Miriam remembers Grayson telling her: “If you learn to bake as your mom does, I will marry you.” 

For Hanukkah, Dinah gave Miriam a copy of The Joy of Cooking and taught her a bit about baking, which got her started. In college, preparing to graduate with an art degree during the recession, Miriam baked a pie for her guidance counselor. As he ate, he said “I know who to call,” Miriam recalls. He helped her find her first job in baking. 

Two years later, she and Grayson, who is now her husband, moved to the North Fork of Long Island and through a friend heard that the owner of the Orient Country Store was retiring. With little experience or knowledge of the area, they took a leap and bought the store. They transformed it into a destination bakery and cafe that plies guests with sandwiches and housemade baked goods including a riff on Dinah’s apple cake. Miriam’s swapped mace for nutmeg, and ditched the whole wheat flour and glaze in her rendition, which she sells in mini loaves. “This is one of those rare cakes that improve with age,” Miriam says, but with lines to buy it, it never reaches that point at the store. She bakes it in the fall, winter, and spring, to reflect the seasons. 

Other recipes at the store also change throughout the year, arriving for their season and then disappearing until the next year. In the late winter, around Purim, it’s hamantaschen that join the pastry case lineup. The community near the store isn’t particularly Jewish, but many neighbors are New Yorkers and know to look for hamantaschen come March. Miriam compares it to an annual circadian rhythm. Her hamantaschen are a riff on a recipe from the New York Times with a flaky and deeply golden dough. Unable to get poppy seed filling to work as she wants it to, Miriam fills some of her hamantaschen with apricot jam and others with dates cooked down with sugar and vanilla. 

Today, years after her mom taught her to bake, Miriam says Dinah still influences her approach. Her mother bakes because she loves the acts of baking, serving, and enjoying the pastries herself. “She’s my standard-bearer for that relationship to food,” Miriam says. “I limit myself to recipes I enjoy.”

Date-Filled Hamantaschen

Makes: About 16 cookies
Total time: 1 hour active + 3 hours inactive

Ingredients
For the dough:
10 ounces unsalted butter, softened and chopped into small cubes
¾ cup granulated sugar 
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Zest of 1 lemon
2 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

For the filling:
3 cups pitted dried dates, finely chopped by hand or with a food processor
1 ½ cups water
⅓ cup sugar 
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation
1. Make the dough: Place the butter and sugar in a food processor. Blend until combined well and creamed, about 1 minute. Add the egg, vanilla and lemon juice and process until smooth. Mix the flour with the lemon zest in a separate bowl. Add the flour and lemon zest mixture and baking powder into the food processor and blend until the dough comes together, about 5 minutes. Transfer the dough onto a floured counter, roll it into a ball and cover it with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 1 ½ hours. 

2. Meanwhile, make the filling: Place the dates, water, and sugar into a small pot over medium high heat. Bring the mixture to a boil and reduce heat to medium low. Cook the mixture on a gentle simmer, occasionally stirring, until it thickens to a jam like texture and the liquid evaporates, about 15 minutes. Mix in the vanilla extract and remove the mixture from the heat. Transfer to a heatproof bowl and let it cool in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes. 

3. Preheat the oven to 375°. 

4. Shape the cookies: Transfer the dough from the refrigerator. Remove the plastic wrap and place it onto a well floured surface. Roll out the dough to a thickness of ¼ an inch. Using a cookie cutter or the back of a cup, cut out 3 inch circles from the dough. Peel off any excess dough and set aside. Place about 1 teaspoon of the date filling into the center of each circle. Brush the edges of the circle with water. Starting with one piece of dough, roll up 3 edges of the cookie to create a triangular shape and pinch the 3 points of the triangle together with your fingers. Keep the center of the cookie open to reveal the filling. Transfer the cookie to a parchment paper lined baking tray. Continue shaping the cookies with the rest of the dough and place them onto the baking sheet. Use the excess dough to make more cookies by combining the pieces into one piece of dough and repeating the rolling, stuffing and shaping process.

5. Transfer the cookies to the oven and bake for about 15 minutes until golden brown. Allow the cookies to cool and serve. 

Dinah's Apple Cake

Photos captured on location at Orient Country Store.

Makes: 10” round tube cake pan
Total Time: 1 hour and 30 minutes

Ingredients
1 ½ cups + ¼ teaspoon vegetable oil, divided
1 ¾ cups sugar
3 eggs
3 cups all purpose flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾  teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½  teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 ½ cups roasted walnuts, roughly chopped 
3 Gala apples, peeled and cored, chopped into 3/4 inch cubes
⅓  cup apple or orange juice

Preparation
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

2. Grease the cake pan with ¼ teaspoon vegetable oil.

3. Mix the wet ingredients: In a large bowl, whisk the vegetable oil and sugar until combined well and creamy. Add the eggs and whisk again until combined and thick. Set aside.

4. Mix the dry ingredients: In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg until combined. Add walnuts and apples and toss in the mixture until all pieces are coated in the dry ingredients.

5. Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl with the dry ingredients and stir well until incorporated. Add the apple or orange juice and mix well.

6. Place the batter into the loaf pan, using a spatula push the batter to cover all the bottom edges of the pan. Transfer to the oven and bake for 50 to 65 minutes minutes until golden brown.

7. Cool the cake for 10 minutes. Turn the pan over onto a cooling rack. Let the cake cool for another 25 minutes. This cake is oil-based and will fall apart if not left to cool long enough.  

8. Serve at room temperature.

Photos by Penny De Los Santos.