A cross between a hamantasch and a peanut butter cup, these Peanut Butter Filled Brownie Hamantaschen will be the most delicious cookie you’ve tasted!
I don’t say this lightly, but I’ve invented the most delicious hamantaschen ever.
I know, it’s a big claim to make, but let’s talk about the awesomeness of these cookies.
Nowadays, everyone is scrambling to invent the cutest, prettiest, most exciting hamantaschen ever. And the ideas keep exploding. But here’s the thing. I like pretty food. I like exciting food. Hey, I even like cute food. But for me, that’s always secondary. First, in my book, will always be taste. If it tastes great, it’s great. If it looks awesome – that’s a bonus.
Well these hamantaschen look really exciting, but…. the taste is To. Die. For. I’m not kidding. I’m pretty sure every person who was lucky enough to taste these was all “these are the best hamantaschen I’ve ever tasted!” unless they were in the speechless category. Or the where-can-I-get-more category.
The texture of the dough is a little unusual…in the best possible way. It’s a cross between a cookie and a brownie – which is, in my (sometimes humble) opinion, the best of both worlds.
Plus, at least 4 tasters independently told me how these reminded them of reeses peanut butter cups, which was awesome, considering how that’s exactly what I was aiming for! Basically, I’ll sum up my whole excited rant by saying this: if you’re one of the majority of humans who love peanut butter and chocolate…these are for you.
- 6 ounces melted chocolate, slightly cooled
- 2 sticks (1 cup) butter or margarine
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla excract
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¾ cup cocoa powder
- 2½ cups flour
- for the filling:
- 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter or margarine
- 1 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1 cup confectioner's sugar
- Preheat oven to 350. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- Melt the chocolate (preferably double boiler style) and set aside to cool slightly while starting the dough.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the margarine and sugars on a medium speed, until creamy.
- Add the eggs, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder and melted chocolate and beat until combined.
- Turn the mixer to low, and add the cocoa powder and flour, slowly, and mix until just combined. The texture will be of a stiff dough.
- To make the filling: combine all ingredients until smooth. (It may be easiest to do this with a mixer, but you can definitely do it by hand as well.)
- To assemble the hamantaschen: Lightly flour a work surface, and roll out the dough to about ⅛ of an inch thickness. (A little thicker is fine, but if the dough is too thick it will be hard to shape.)
- Cut circles of the dough using a circle cookie cutter or the bottom of a glass. Place about a half a teaspoon of the peanut butter filling in the center. Do not overfill.
- Bring the three sides of the circle together to form the hamantaschen shape. Pinch the edges together tightly.
- Place the hamantaschen on the tray and repeat with remaining dough and filling. Leave a bit of room between the hamantaschen to allow for spreading.
- Bake the hamantaschen at 350 for 10 minutes.
NOTE: Based on feedback from people who made this! Lots of people have made it without a problem. Some people have commented that it was too loose to shape. If you find that, add up to 1 cup additional flour (start with half a cup and go from there). This dough is not the easiest to work with, but trust me – the end result is so worth it!
Enjoy!
PS – not a huge peanut butter fan? (WHAT?) Fill these with chocolate hazelnut spread such as Nutella or Delinut for a double chocolate experience you won’t forget anytime soon!
Hope you love these hamantaschen as much as we did! Make sure to head on over and “like” my facebook page! I’ve got a giveaway coming up when I reach 3500 likes! -Miriam
what type of chocolate did you use?
Semi-sweet baking chocolate. Any dark chocolate would work well here.
Or fill them with Lotus spread? (that is, if you can get your hands on some!)
These look amazing!!!
Any chance of making these with oil?
I haven’t tried it with oil so I can’t say for sure.
Haven’t tried it!
Would oil work instead of margarine/butter?
Can’t say for sure – I haven’t tried it.
Haven’t tried it.
Sooo gonna try these. Did you refrigerate the dough at all? I know it depends on the size of the cookie cutter, but how many approx. did this make? Thanks!
No refrigeration needed – it’s a stiff dough. Like it says in the recipe – 5-6 dozen cookies.
Thanks! And Sorry, didn’t see the amount. 😛
Do you think I can put Jam?
Sure!
what diameter glass did you use? (approx. is fine too)
Just a standard drinking glass!
Shandel, most hamentaschen are made with circles that are around 3 inches.
This recipe sounds great – can’t wait to try it!
What can I say besides I WANT MORE? These are so unbelievably delicious… can’t stop raving!
Wow! These do look great. Your awesome ideas just keep coming!!
A friend linked to these. I just need to say, I have no PB in my house, but I have PB Dreams *chocolate* PB. And skippy’s dark chocolate PB. I think I need to make hamentaschen.
I’ve never had hamantaschen but this sounds like the way to go!
This recipe looks incredible, but it makes so many cookies! Do you think it can be cut in half?
You can try! But believe me, you’ll want a lot of these!
For the middle, do you melt the margarine?
Nope!
Sound delicious! Can I prepare them and freeze and bake them the day I need them?
For sure!
Yum! Didn’t have margarine, used half coconut oil and half regular oil, and slipped the margarine in the filling. Dough a littke crumbly but delicious
*skipped
These are so cute!! You are so creative!! Love it!
If one uses Nutella, do you still use the butter and confectioners sugar?
Please and thank you!
Susie
Not needed!
I tried it with oil, it changed the texture and taste 🙁 The filling is delicious though!!
My business partner just sent me this recipe knowing how much I love Hamantaschen (not to mention peanut butter and chocolate), and I cannot wait to make them! Glad the weekend is coming…
I made these today, its taste yumm! Though the dough wasn’t stiff enough so i added 1/2 more flour. It was hard to work with the dough, any tips on how to make them perfect ?? The last frw i made sandwich cookies with the circleand put the filling inbetween. Thanks for the recipe!!!
Agreed. My dough did not become stiff at all. I didn’t add any extra flour, but it ended up being way too soft to roll.
I had to add a whole extra cup of flour to make it thick enough, but then it rolled out fine and tasted great!
Can these be frozen? If so how?
Sure! Make them and bake them then freeze airtight.
Thanks so much!
Did you use butter or margarine for your cookies? If margarine, did you use a regular one or a trans-free one? I want to try using a trans-free one like Earth Balance sticks or even shortening (Crisco) but am not sure it will come out the same! What do you think? Thanks!
I used trans fat free margarine.
Can I ask which brand? 🙂
Your photos are beautiful!
The dough was too sticky and I had to put in a lot of extra flour (more than a cup). The hamentashen spread and the peanut butter filling puffed up and then concaved inwards… They also don’t taste anything like a Reese Peanut Butter Cup…
I love the idea of this recipe…
These taste wonderful! Thanks for this recipe. My only problem was that the dough repeatedly cracked. I even tried putting it in the fridge & adding some ice water. Any suggestions?
Putting the dough in the fridge is probably what made it crack! The dough gets harder to handle when it’s cold.
Actually, it cracked before putting it in the fridge. I thought that maybe putting it in there might help. Am I the only one who had that problem?
same here. they were crumbly when rolling but totally fell apart the minute i tried folding them. the most i could get to the oven in decent condition was 5 single hamentashen. such a shame…my kids and i were really looking forward to these.
Can i make the dough and freeze it and then shape and bake it later?
No, I don’t recommend that. THe dough will get hard to handle if you freeze it.
Does anyone have glutin free version?
Thanks so much for posting this! These were great… I am not the best baker and I found the recipe easy to follow. When I saw that the dough was not like regular hamantashen dough I wondered if I did it right… but when I got to cutting and folding them, they worked just perfectly. When they were first made they were soft and chewy like a brownie. After a few days I noticed they got crispy and wondered if they would taste stale… NOT AT ALL! they tasted like a chocolate cookie. Really a great recipe will make again.
After reading the many comments about this recipe, I was somewhat reluctant to make it. However, as a major chocolate addict and lover of hamentashen baking, how could I resist? Despite popular belief, I found this dough incredibly easy to work with. FYI, I used Migdal pareve margarine (yes, I know it’s not transfat-free!)
and didn’t change the measurements of any of the ingredients. I was out of peanut butter but substituted cashew butter instead. YUM! I also filled half of the hamentashen with a Hashahar tranfat-free and nut-free chocolate spread. It’s a nice alternative to Nutella. I’ve packed the hamentashen away so I not only save them for my mishloach manot, but also to resist the temptation from eating them! Thank you Miriam for sharing this wonderful recipe!
Although the end result tasted delicious, the dough was very hard to work with. Had to add the extra flour (too sticky to roll out), but then the dough cracked a lot after. Added a little oil to try to soften it up, but it still cracked (when folding over). It’s warm and humid where I live, do you think that is what could have been the demise of this cookie?
I just made a batch of these hamantaschen and they came out terrific! The brownie dough was perfect and rolled out beautifully. I used the exact ingredients from the recipe with no substitutions and I didn’t need any extra flour for rolling them out. Make sure to cut and form them as soon as you roll them so they don’t dry out because that will cause them to crack. The first few that I made, I pinched totally closed assuming that they would open a little, but they did not open at all. The subsequent batches I pinched almost closed but left a little open in the center and they are so beautiful with the iconic hamantaschen style. I am fasting, so it is torture watching them cool on the counter but they look like they will be a yummy bite – or two or three… (with a glass of milk) when the fast is over.
These were hard to roll. Some look beautiful and others cracked when folded and pinched. Towards the end, none cooperated and I gave up. I made chocolate crumbs for our chocolate martinis we will make for our seudah open house on Sunday. I am having dairy and made this recipe with butter, perhaps that is why it was hard to roll. Even so, I appreciate your creativity and even the not so pretty ones will be delicious.
Trying to make this now and my dough came out all crumbly any suggestions what to do? This is my first time making hamantaschen.
I just made these with butter flavored crisco. The dough was crumbly so this was not a fun experience. I tried a few with Raspberry jelly (don’t–maybe jam will work but what I used didn’t). They taste and look good but it took a lot of shaping on my part because the dough was so crumbly.
Am I the only one that had trouble with this dough? What can I do to make the dough easier to work with?
Also: cool the Hamataschen on the cookie sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack. If you move them too soon, they fall apart.
I made these and they looked great and tasted delicious!
I used Dutch process cocoa, so the chocolate flavor was dark and not too sweet, so the very sweet peanut butter filling balanced it well. I actually ran out of filling about 10 cookies too early, so I filled those with blackberry jam and they came out looking and tasting very classy. 🙂
I don’t know if these made a difference in the manageability of the dough (I found it very easy to work with):
(1) I let the dough rest at room temperature for about an hour (not on purpose — I got distracted)
(2) I didn’t add the extra flour to the big bowl of cookie batter; I took a big handful out, put it on my pastry mat and sprinkled lightly with flour, then kneaded to incorporate. Another light dusting with flour if dough was still sticky, until it was a good consistency for rolling out.
(3) My new silicone pastry mat and rolling pin! In the past, cookies have stuck to the parchment paper or plastic that I rolled them out on, but this time it worked great. Maybe it was my tools.
My son isn’t a fan of peanut butter, so I filled them with Fluff. AMAZING! (And the rest of us loved the peanut butter.)
yum! these look so good!
I just couldn’t resist this recipe. Made them for Shalach Manos & got tonnnnnssssss of rave reviews.
I did find the dough a little dry, but if you work/knead it by hand a little it seemed to come together very nicely. I also found that even if the bottom edges seemed to crack when I was folding, they baked back together and came out beautifully.
Thanks for such a great recipe!!!!!!!!
Hope you had a great Purim!
I’m just learning how to bake, and I found this recipe took me a long time. I only got about two dozen hamentashen out of it, not 5-6 dozen. I used Earth Balance stick margarine and the dough seemed fine. I also had lots of leftover peanut butter filling, which I added to some brownies I was making from a mix. That turned out very well. The hamentashen themselves were good, but nothing like a Reese’s I think the problems were due to my lack of skill as a baker. Thank you for publishing the recipe.
wow I love peanut butter & brownie, it looks soooo delicious, I’ll try it.
Can I halve this recipe? I don’t need 6 dozen hamantaschen… 3 dozen would be enough. Thanks!
Once you get past the fact that the dough is pretty difficult to work with, these hamantaschen are insanely amazing!!!
In the process and my hamentaschen are spreading to becoming jumbo!! I wouldnt mind so much except they thin out and burn on the edges…any ideas? Tastes fantastic…
I want to use this dough but with a Mexican hot chocolate flavor! How much cinnamon and chili powder do you recommend I add? Or should I use cayenne instead? Planned on filling with dulche de leche! Thanks!
The dough was wonderful but the cookies came out flat! What did I do wrong?