Elana's Pantry

New York Times Bestselling author Elana Amsterdam founded Elana’s Pantry, the go-to website for easy, healthy, grain-free, Paleo recipes, in 2006

Gluten-Free Raspberry Hamantaschen

Gluten-Free Raspberry Hamantaschen

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Recently I was paid a visit by the Rebbetzin, Eve. She had gone gluten-free and given up white sugar as well.  We had tea in my kitchen and chatted, having such a pleasant time together. A few days later, Eve emailed me looking for a gluten-free Hamantaschen recipe.

Gluten-Free Raspberry Hamantaschen

Given how special Eve is, I had to create this Gluten-Free Raspberry Hamantaschen recipe in her honor. With 7 ingredients total, it’s the easiest Hamantaschen recipe you’ll ever make. Because of that, we refer to it as “Hamantaschen express,” or “McHamantaschen.” This drive-through gluten-free, dairy-free treat is perfect for your Purim celebrations and Shaloch Manos.

SCD Hamantaschen Recipe

If you make these Hamantaschen with honey they are an SCD compliant treat. They’re like a little grain-free jam cookie or mini-jam tart.

Low-Carb Hamantaschen Recipe

These Hamantaschen are low-carb to begin with. But if you’re following a Ketogenic Diet and need a dessert that is low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) then you can substitute the raspberry jam in the center and use dark chocolate instead. I like this 88% dark chocolate which is made locally, in Boulder.

Print Recipe
Gluten-Free Raspberry Hamantaschen
Serves:12
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. In a large bowl, combine almond flour and salt
  2. In a small bowl, combine shortening, honey, vanilla, and water
  3. Mix wet ingredients into dry
  4. Chill dough in refrigerator 1 hour
  5. Roll out dough between 2 pieces of parchment paper ¼ inch thick
  6. Cut dough in circles using a 3 inch cookie cutter
  7. Drop ½ teaspoon raspberry jam into center of each circle
  8. Fold dough in to create a triangle, pinch corners firmly
  9. Bake at 350°F for 7-9 minutes, until cookies are golden brown around edges
  10. Cool for 30 minutes
  11. Serve

How to Make Hamantaschen

I used to use a scalloped cookie cutter (1 ¾-inches in diameter) to make these, but have updated the recipe to make Hamantaschen that are a bit bigger. When I first started making these it was challenging to get an exact yield as my younger son ate them almost as fast as I baked them!

Kid-Friendly Hamantaschen Recipe

Because this recipe is so easy, it’s one I enjoy making with my boys. When my older son and I discussed the ingredients list and method for these Gluten-Free Raspberry Hamantaschen he was not happy that I didn’t have an exact measurement for the raspberry jam so I’ve added that measurement. There is a lot of quality control around here.

Elana’s Pantry Quality Control

In some of the first batches, the corners of the Hamantaschen opened up a bit during baking. To remedy this, I pinched the dough firmly and the result was perfect. When my son and I debated which adverb to use to describe this step, he suggested, “pinch the dough a little bit more than tenderly.” He was 10 years old when we had that conversation! I love freshening up old posts like this one because I get to look at my life in a heart-shaped time capsule!

More Gluten-Free Hamantaschen Recipes

I hope you enjoy this Gluten-Free Raspberry Hamantaschen recipe as much as we do! Here are more gluten-free, grain-free Hamantaschen recipes for you.

This post is an oldie but goodie from the archives. I first published this recipe in 2009.

Comments

  1. Hi Elana, I would like to start a meal diet for myself and husband.
    Both of us are diagnosed with celiac disease and are obese.
    We wish to change our diet for health reason and wish to shake off some fats from our body.
    Looking at the special diet, we are at lost which to follow and where to start from.
    We really need your help to guide us on which diet should we follow and how do we do that?
    We wish to have a meal plan as a guide when come to preparing the meal. Can you please help?

    Reply

  2. Used the exact ingredients. Made them the first time and they were too crumbly. The second time the dough was so soft it would not roll. Too bad the first batch tasted great. I am a baker too, so I have idea why it did not work out. I bake all of the time with almond flour, used the very same ingredients you have listed, same brands even.

    Reply

    • Lena, thanks for your comment! I’m guessing the first batch may have had a mis-measurement. The second sounds like it needed to be chilled just a bit longer :-)

      Reply

  3. I baked these last week for a Jewish friend who was coming to dinner with his wife as dessert. He was so touched he had tears of happiness! He hadn’t had these since his grandmothers passing. We all loved them!

    A baking note…I melted the butter in microwave, stirred in the honey, water, and vanilla. Added to flour/salt and mixed with a fork. I had already set the table so rolling them out wasn’t doable. Skipping the hour in the refrigerator, I hand formed the cookies easily into individual triangles and pressed in the center adding the raspberry jam with a small spoon. It was easy easy!

    Reply

  4. Bless you! I have wanted to create a gf hamantashen since I had to go gluten free. I have never loved loved them, but I think it was the prune stuff inside that really turned me off. But I figured there must have been different fillings somewhere!
    Thank you!!

    Reply

  5. Thanks for sharing this. We celebrate Purim as well. I love the story of Esther. I am so thankful for your ideas and recipes since we can’t have gluten either and I was just looking for a recipe with raspberries in it. I also just realized you live by me in Boulder. So cool! Bless yoU!

    Reply

  7. Hi, delicious flavor-but too salty. I followed the recipe exactly and theres a pretty strong salty flavor that’s a bit overpowering.

    Reply

    • Samantha, this happens when a table salt is used rather than the salt I link to in the recipe. We made these last night with the brands of ingredients called for in the recipe and they were devoured by my son and his friends :-)

      Reply

  8. Wow! These look delicious. We celebrate Purim at Children’s Church and the kids love the Hamantaschen cookies . . . and the story of Esther. Thanks for this great recipe . . . look forward to using it this coming Spring.

    Reply

    • Leslie, thanks for your wonderful comment! I love the Book of Esther, it’s so inspiring. I hope you love these as much as we do :-)

      Reply

  9. wow! Recipe looks delicious. I plan on making these for my father in law. I was comparing your two Hamantaschen recipes. The first one does mention an egg yet the second recipe does not. I plan on following the second recipe, since it’s easier. Just to be clear, there is no egg to be added for the second recipe, right ?

    Reply

  11. Just made these with my kiddos and they’re unbelievably easy and come out great. We like to put chocolate chips in the middle of some and jam in the others. Delish! Thanks for such an easy recipe!

    Reply

  14. Hi Elana, I am gluten intolerant & have candida (must eat low carb low sugar) your recipes all sound great for me however I cannot have agave, honey or maple syrup and I do not tolerate stevia unfortunately. Is there a way to use apple sauce, canned pumpkin or Splenda instead? How would I substitute for agave for example-? Thank you :)

    Reply

  15. Just took mine out of the oven; they taste fantastic AND look fantastic. The used coconut oil instead of grapeseed and used one tablespoon agave and one tablespoon honey. Yum!

    Reply

  16. I make your desserts at least once a week. It always tastes delicious but never looks as good as the picture. I guess I need a lot of practice and experiment too.
    Thank you for all your posts. I was used to live without cakes, cookies and breads but now I can have all of them without getting ill.

    Reply

  17. I made these a year or two ago using coconut oil (melted) rather than grapeseed oil and honey for the sweetener. They came out pleasantly reminiscent of macaroons – and I realized these would be great at Passover, too, in whatever shape one chose.

    Of course, other fillings work too. I made some cherry filling using canned sweet cherries (thickened with a bit of arrowroot, so liquid cooked down). They are also divine with a few Dagoba 73% chocolate drops.

    Reply

  18. Hi Elana,

    May I suggest “pinch the dough firmly,” thus saving yourself five words.

    The raspberry hamantaschen dough recipe looks delicious – though, I’ll substitute apricot jam.

    I found your recipe, after a search for gluten-free hamantaschen, as I do have celiac. Thank you so much for providing for those of us who do.

    Reply

  19. Dear Elana, I don’t know who I’m in love with more – your son or you. ‘A little bit more than tenderly’? He’s going to break someone’s heart soon!

    That is not the reason I’m writing. I wanted to tell you how I adapted your fantastic hamentaschen recipe this last Christmas. Yup. I’m not Jewish. But I have plenty of Jewish relatives, and I love the stories. That’s not it. I was coming up against my second Christmas without mince pies, having been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s 2 years ago.

    I am English. A Christmas without mince pies in England is a sad thing indeed. Too sad. I became determined. I looked up your website, and I used your hamentaschen recipe (minus the jam) as the tart base to fill up with my mother-in-law’s sugar-free mince pie filling. In tiny little muffin cases. They were a complete sensation. Truly. You saved me. Even she loved them.

    Thank you, Elana. You inspire me and, in dire moments, save me. As do your sons. x

    Reply

  23. I made these today for my kids and they turned out really delish. I used this dough although used the method from Elana’s other Hamantaschen recipe to roll into balls, flatten and fill. This dough is so versitile that we also made little “thumbprint” cookies by rolling the balls in unsweetened, shredded coconut, made a slight indentation in the middle and filled with a bit of jam. DELISH and so quick and easy. This dough would also make a nice base for a bar cookie as well. Love them! Thank you.

    Reply

  25. Hi, I am hoping to find a vegan, sugar free, almond flour marzipan cookie recipe. Sort of like the Hamanstachen recipe, with jam in the center. Could I just add almond paste in place of some of the grape seed oil? Thanks!

    Reply

  28. Here is a suggestion for shaping any difficult dough into reasonable looking hamantaschen:

    Take SMALL muffin tins and line them with small paper cups of the appropriate size. Then take a small lump of the dough, put it into a muffin cup and shape it along the bottom and a little up the sides with your finger or thumb. Put a small amount of the jam filling in the middle and then gently fold down the sides in three folds. Voila! You have a neatly contained cuplike hamantasch which will not overflow or have droopy collapsing sides. Bake and cool and remove from the paper cups and they look like normally constructed rolled dough hamamntaschen.

    from a challenged frustrated hamantaschen maker, no matter what the dough!
    Rochelle

    Reply

  30. Elana,
    I am preparing for Purim and came across your hamentaschen recipe. I notice that in this one there is no egg but in the one you posted in 2008 you used one egg. Any reason for the recipe change?

    Thanks.

    Ellen

    Reply

  31. Hi Elana,

    I tried this recipe, and although it was delicious and everyone loved the cookies, I feel like I struggled with the dough to get it to stick together. Picking up the circles and pinching the ends together, the dough would rip, and I did have the fall apart problems you mentioned above. Do you have any tips?

    Thanks!
    Anna

    Reply

  32. I am not gluten intolerant but diabetic and controlled by diet which means NO flour — after making 72 + dozen hamantachen ( which I can’t eat) I was wondering about using Almond flour and got your great recipe — So I substituted Waldon farms rasperberry spread (zero carbs) for jam and took out the agave nectar (used DaVinici sugar free Vanilla and Cocomut spyrups — I don’t use agave nectar as it is a fructose and can cause high triglicerides) but oh to have a hamantash that I can eat — Thank you!

    Reply

  34. I was so excited to try these, but became frustrated with my dough. I found it difficult to work with – too crumbly. (I’m using Honeyville almond flour.) Should I have added more water, honey, or oil? Also, how do you keep the parchment paper from sliding on the counter when rolling the dough?

    I ended up with one batch of flat thumbprint cookies and one batch of chocolate chip cookies (added chocolate chips and made drop cookies).

    -Gena
    Boulder, CO

    Reply

    • Hi Gina, I found the same issue with the dough… i added another teaspoon of agave nectar and grapeseed oil each and dipped my fingertips in water now and then when forming the cookies. also, my saving grace was figuring out how to use the rubber spatula to push/form the walls/sides of the cookies, one at a time, so they didn’t fall apart as much. really worked!

      Reply

  36. I usually have pretty good luck with baking, but I had some trouble with these. I made almond flour by toasting blanched almonds and then processing them to a powder. I thought that would be a viable substitution. Made rest of recipe as directed, but my dough would not stick together enough to make a cute triangle like yours. So sad. So, I just rolled the dough out and cut out small circles (like the size of a bite) and topped them with homemade applesauce thickened with a little cornstarch. Tastes fantastic…really really good, but they were UG-A-LEE! Sounds like everyone else who made them had great success, so it must have been my “flour”. Will try again with actual almond flour.

    Reply

  37. Elana –
    I had a sweet tooth today after reading a blog about Purim. What a treat to stumble across your recipe for gluten/dairy free hamantashen. AND the best part was that I had all of the ingredients in my house. I prefer high raw, but I made an exception to cook these tonight…What a great excuse! they were delicious. Now, if I could only stop eating them…

    Reply

  38. This is so wonderful! Purim is coming up and I am doing an Esther Bible study and wondered how I was going to be able to taste these fun treats with my gluten-free lifestyle!

    Thanks for sharing!! :)

    Reply

  39. Hi Elana,

    These look fabulous…and I just got my shipment of Honeyville blanched almond flour. Do you know whether these freeze well? My husband and I have a wedding to attend next weekend so we can’t eat that many cookies this week!

    Also, do you have any recipes for the poppy filling or prune lekvar? Those are our favorites, though raspberry jam and apricot or orange marmalade are awesome too!

    Thanks!

    Reply

    • Hi,

      These are real ‘eye candy’. Once again, you’ve gifted us. Thank you.
      And:
      YES!!
      I too would love a poppy seed filling. Please!! Pleeeeeese!
      As to prune jam/lekvar: can sub it for the raspberry readily. Should be yum
      Even tho the holiday ends tonight, would love to find a way. Is it to simply cook w a sweetener?

      many thanks, again and again!

      Reply

  40. Elana,

    I am really enjoying your blog and your recipes. I am newly diagnosed gluten intolerant with multiple food allergies. Unfortunately, I have had to give up GF baked good because I am allergic to sodium bicarbonate (baking soda & baking powder). I had to give up my favorite pre-packaged GF baking/pancake mix because of this. The ingredients do contain stuff you do not eat, but you would you please help me recreate a recipe for “flat” pancakes from these ingredients?

    Package ingredients in order as listed: Brown rice flour; White rice flour; cultured buttermilk; natural almond meal; tapioca starch; sweet rice flour; potato starch; baking powder (can’t have); baking soda (can’t have); sea salt; xanthan gum.

    A big hearty “THANK YOU!” Elana. You are a blessing. ~Andrea

    Reply

  41. Thanks so much Elena — my Mom (Italian) makes her version (not gluten free) of these and sends them to my husband. He freezes them and sneaks them when I am not around — so I am so very happy to have a gluten free version that I can have — can’t wait to try them this weekend.

    As always, you are the best!!

    Theresa Watson
    Merritt Island, FL

    Reply

  42. I made these cookies last night and they are yummy! Not too sweet, just perfect with a cup of tea. Thanks Elana for your amazing creativity and your gift of passing recipes along.

    Reply

  43. Thanks for your comments. I am working on a chocolate version of these and hope to have the recipe up before Purim as I’ve had several requests for this on and offline.

    Reply

  44. It is wonderful you created gluten-free, sugar-free cookies that are great. Would you mind to try it to make nuts-free as my son is allergic to all kind of nuts and seeds.

    Reply

  47. This looks sooo easy!! Well, at least it has very few ingredients!!! Love that part!!! Gotta get to the store and replenish my almond flour. Don’t have 2 cups :(((

    Looks very good!!! Thanks so much for sharing!!

    Reply

  48. Hi Elana,

    I just wanted to say hello. I was given your name and info from your sister Dina, about a year ago. I know her through my good friend, Bay. I am just now finally truly committing to eliminating wheat from my diet. I am focusing on the wheat for now, although I imagine gluten is close behind. Trying to figure out if it is the wheat alone that makes me feel, or gluten too.

    I am enjoying your site very much so far, and will venture into actually baking some of these delicious looking items soon !

    I am thankful that you are doing this : )
    Lauren Purcell

    Reply

  50. Ohhh! Elana, I love your stories that go along with your YUM recipes :-) Your son is a gem!
    McHamantaschen! Love it! I am going to make these this weekend, as I just so happened to pick up some 100% fruit jam at the store earlier this week. I must’ve known :)
    I am wondering, why did you decide to give up dairy? I know some of your old recipes include dairy. Is this an allergy or just a health choice? I am allergic to dairy but my husband chooses not to eat it just because he feels better without it, rather than an allergy. (And he can’t say no to my homemade coconut milk ice cream!!) Yum. Have a nice day!

    Reply

    • Emily, I experiment with giving up various potential allergens at various times to see what my body does best with. Enjoy the hamantaschen :-)

      Reply

  51. Taking requests??

    I would *love* some casseroles that are particularly kid friendly. (I searched for “casserole” in the “super natural recipe” cite you posted, and only came up with a dozen hits, most of them a bit too exotic for my boys, 2 & 4.)
    Something that I can make 4 of and freeze on Saturday, and have one meal a week for a month, setting it out to thaw in the morning, cooking as soon as I walk in the door (I have 1/2 hour between getting home from work with boys and boys-losing-it-from-hunger.) Every time I look at a “30 minute meals” type website or cookbook, the recipes are laden with dairy and wheat.

    Am I the only working-Mom-of-very-young-kids here?

    Thanks for listening!

    Reply

  52. I am not that crazy about Hamantaschen (here in Israel we have them in every possible flavour…)but yours made of almond flour sound really yummy.

    Reply

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