Slow Food Fast

The first batch didn't roll out so easily, but these coin-sized minis tasted pretty good. The next batch rolled out thinner and held together better for a larger cookie with a delicate crust.

Baked goods are a big part of Jewish holidays at this time of year. Purim, being celebrated this weekend, is the last big baking bash before Passover, and hamantaschen (named for the hat, ears or purse of Haman, the villain of the story of Esther) are the cookie of choice. But with a diabetic kid in the house, the usual prospect of baking them takes on a bitter edge.

Hamantaschen–in fact, most cookies–have enough grams of carbohydrate that just two medium-sized cookies contain about half of what she’s supposed to have in any given large meal, twice what’s recommended for a snack, and they don’t have enough fiber or protein to slow down the sugars and avoid a spike in blood glucose. In short, not high-quality nutrition (not that we expect cookies to be). A grownup would have trouble dealing with the prospect of leaving them alone when everyone else gets to have them, but a kid faced with Purim celebrations at school or synagogue is bound for a certain degree of heartbreak.

It’s made me rethink our whole attitude toward things like Girl Scout cookies (this is also the season for that), chips, M&Ms, in fact any casual snack food that gets handed out innocently at school (our current woe–apparently my daughter’s teacher does this kind of thing at least weekly). The snack habit–anytime, anywhere, any or no reason–has become so ingrained in daily life we hardly think about whether it’s appropriate or not. Certainly the handouts are happening more and more frequently in class than I remember when I was a kid–did teachers even hand out treats back then? Not in my elementary school. It’s especially hard for a kid to “just say no” (and we already know how well that advice works in other contexts) when everyone else is taking a cookie or some M&Ms as a reward for answering a question (can they even keep their minds on the subject)? And even worse when it’s the teacher handing them out, because the teacher’s supposed to know whether it’s ok to eat or not.

Maybe we shouldn’t be handing these things out so casually or so often? Because while most people can handle surprise extras like these, they’re probably not all that good for anyone to eat indiscriminately at just any time of day. If they’re spiking a diabetic kid’s blood sugar, you can be sure they’re doing the same thing to your kid’s blood sugar too, only his or her body is responding with extra insulin to cover it. We get to see the results directly every couple of hours with our daughter–complete with sudden attacks of giddiness or tears if things peak and crash too quickly. But the same kind of thing happens to some degree to a lot of kids who aren’t diabetic, and they probably get reprimanded for it. Probably happens to a lot of adults, too.

Still, it’s the holiday, and total deprivation from treats is not really my aim today. So I’ve been trying to figure out a revised recipe for hamantaschen with a more manageable carb count, and preferably one without artificial sweeteners since my kid is still a kid. And neither of us wants it to taste like chalk. Very important.

I start most years with Joan Nathan’s cookie-dough hamantaschen recipe from The Jewish Holiday Kitchen because it’s the best dough I’ve ever tasted for these, even though it’s pareve (non-dairy, non-meat) and doesn’t have butter or cream cheese or the like. It’s not too sweet or too dry, and it doesn’t look or taste chalky or pasty like some of the dead-white offerings at the Purim carnivals. It tastes like a pretty good cookie, and it works really well for rolling out.

Looking at the carb count breakdown for that recipe, at about 12-15 g each, it might not be so bad to do regular hamantaschen, but my daughter would need to eat one or at most two with something protein or fiber, and she’d need insulin for it, so she couldn’t just grab one in between the planned meals. Kind of a pain, no doubt about it.

I was hoping for something closer to carb-free so she could eat hers with impunity when everyone else is eating theirs. This year I scanned the web for low-carb hamantaschen recipes and found only one Continue reading →

Filed under: books, cooking, Desserts, history, kid food, nutrition, Revised recipes | Tagged: almond meal, baking, cookie recipes, Hamantaschen, Jewish holidays, juvenile diabetes, low-carb cookie dough, low-carb desserts, low-carb hamantaschen, pastry, Purim | Comments Off on Low-Carb Hamantaschen Without Artificial Sweeteners