Cake Mix Hamantaschen

Love making hamantaschen but want to shorten the process? This cake mix hamantaschen dough recipe tastes like the real deal, but only takes 3 minutes to mix.  Perfect for baking with kids, too!

Purim is this week, which means it’s time for the most delicious of all holiday-themed cookies: hamantaschen!

A few years ago, I shared a delicious, easy, made entirely-from-scratch traditional homemade hamataschen dough recipe.  It rolls out like a dream, is easy to fold over, and stays closed while you bake it.

Buuuuut I also mentioned that the recipe wasn’t quite what I was looking to replicate. 

I have spent years (YEARS! DECADES! MY ENTIRE ADULT LIFE!) trying to replicate the hamantaschen from my childhood — these giant, artificially yellow-ish, super crumbly, much more cake-like than cookie-like, perfectly triangular hamantaschen.

So when my mother said this year, she made hamantaschen from a cake mix I was super excited.  I generally prefer to bake from scratch, but how better to replicate cakey hamantaschen than using a cake mix?

(Spoiler alert: this was not the cakey hamantaschen recipe of my dreams, which I am convinced may not really exist.  Perhaps I am misremembering?)

But, what we have here, is a very good, very easy recipe, that is not entirely too dissimilar from my traditional homemade hamantaschen recipe, except the dough rolls a little thinner.

And also, it’s made from cake mix, so it’s the PERFECT solution to those of you who want hamantaschen but aren’t super into baking from scratch.  Or the perfect first hamantaschen for little bakers – this is such an easy “cooking with kids” recipe! 

Yes, this is made from cake mix — I see you baking purists shuddering. But it also takes like three minutes to make the dough, and then you get to the fun part: filling and folding. 

Let’s back up a second first, though.  Purim?  Hamantaschen?  What’s all this about?