Knead Love Bakery founder Sarah Magid has fond memories of her childhood Purim celebrations in the 1980s. The hamantaschen recipe her family made calls for orange juice, which lends the cookies a citrusy note.

Every fall, Maya Tsameret’s family swapped sleep one night for shifts in their backyard where they cooked down a pot of plums into sweet paste called powidl. Come Purim, they used it to make their hamantaschen.

Knead Love Bakery’s Sarah Magid grew up baking hamantaschen with her mother Ruby and grandma Eva, but today makes a gluten-free version of the cookie for her bakery around Purim.

Any filling you like will work with this hamantaschen recipe, but marzipan, which you can buy in a block, or a simple homemade lemon curd are particularly nice. 

These hamantaschen with a nutty poppy seed filling are yeasted, which gives them a softer texture. Make sure to reserve an hour to let the dough rise. 

Small savory pies called sambusak are served in many Middle Eastern Jewish homes. When Ayelet Izraeli's family lived in Iraq, they made these pastries for Purim, but they are also wonderful for Shavuot.

When Ilana Isaac’s mother Marcel lived in Baghdad, these date-filled cookies were part of her family’s annual Purim party. The technique takes a little bit of time to master, but it’s well worth it. 

This yeasted dessert from Hungary can be filled with walnuts or poppy seeds. The recipe comes from Yonit Naftali and her great-grandmother who perished during the Holocaust.  

A multilayered Hungarian pastry with poppy seeds, walnuts, and apples, fluden is a wonderful project recipe to make for Purim or on a winter weekend. This recipe is finished with a bit of apricot jam. 

Masapan — or marzipan — is an important part of celebrations like weddings and Purim celebrations in cookbook author Stella Hanan Cohen Sephardi community.

These delicate cookies filled with dates and walnuts come from Stella Hanan Cohen’s Sephardi community. You will need a cookie mold (which are readily available online) and a bit of time to make them, but the results are well worth it.

Filling hamantaschen with dulce de leche helps Mia Zimman connect the threads of her daughter’s heritage. “She’s Latina, Jewish, American — she’s got so many cultural identities. It just feels really good to put together a few different pieces into one,” Mia says. 

Made with potatoes and flour, these Hungarian noodles are cut by hand. In Julia Silverberg Nemeth’s family they are tossed with poppy seeds, topped with powdered sugar, and served with apricot or plum jam.

Dates make for a wonderfully sweet filling for hamantaschen in this recipe from Miriam Foster who owns the Orient Country Store on the North Fork of Long Island. 

“This version of almond and sesame seed brittle is an ancient recipe that dates back generations from the home cooks of medieval Spain,” explains Stella Hanan Cohen. The candies will hold for up to a month, so you can keep them on hand. 

Holocaust survivor Alta Blima Hartstein used to make kindl for holidays and big family gatherings. The dough is made with red wine, seltzer, and yeast and the cookies have a sweet, chewy walnut filling.

When Rivka Hazan was growing up in Jerusalem in the 1930s and 1940s, her mother used the oven at the nearby Persian bakery when she made sweets for holidays like this recipe for Purim.

“Pan d’Espanya (pan esponjado) is the iconic orange chiffon cake that has been made for generations [by] the Jews of Spain,” explains cookbook author Stella Hanan Cohen. In her community, it's traditionally made for Purim, Yom Kippur break fast, and life-cycle celebrations.

In Ayelet Izraeli’s Iraqi family, these cookies are made for Purim celebrations. But, with only three ingredients, you can even make them at the end of a busy work day.

When Ayelet Izraeli's family lived in Baghdad, preparations for Purim stared weeks before the holiday. Cousins gathered to make treats like date filled b’ebe b’tamer, savory cheese sambusak, coconut cookies, and these ring shaped cookies.