it is fiiiiiiinally snowing!!!!

and it's been coming down *hard* all day. it's amazing! best day ever. i'm wearing fleece and christmas commercials are on the tv and i've just frosted a bunch of sugar cookies, so happy holidays??? when do we open presents??

part of me wants to put my jammies on, hunker down while tim allen dad bods around in his santa claus outfit, and not emerge until the springtime, but (!) i've got curling again tonight! so hunkering down will have to wait.

ohmygosh, curling is so much fun. on tuesday we went over the basics of releasing the stone down the ice, which i loved because i got to put my yoga lunges and balancing practices to use. tonight we're going to sweep more. we did some of that toward the end of class on tuesday and i kept feeling like i was going to fall on my face but the good part was that it kept me warmer because, my goodness, that rink is cold. i think i'll wear long underwear tonight...

how many of you completed your hawaij assignment this week?? isn't hawaij bananas?!! if you're just joining us, hawaij is a yemeni spice blend and it is pronounced "huh-why-adge." there are two types: hawaij for soup and hawaij for coffee, and the kind we're focusing on today is the coffee blend. (although you should definitely get with some hawaij for soup, too.) hawaij for coffee typically includes ginger and cardamom, and then any number of other spices in that flavor realm, like cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, maybe anise or fennel... in other words it is basically what would happen if pumpkin spice got swallowed up by cardamom. and hawaij isn't basic yet, so obsess over it shamelessly while you can!

hawaij is perfect when it's sprinkled into coffee grounds (it's like cardamom coffee on steroids), and coffee goes well with donuts. so here, have some hawaij coffee donuts! they're very cozy. very tasty. very winter.

hawaij coffee donuts

makes 12

ingredients

1 c sugar
1 3/4 c flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tb hawaij (recipe below)
1 large egg
6 tb buttermilk
6 tb oil
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 c coffee, hot or cold or room temp

glaze:

1 c confectioners’ sugar
2 tb coffee
1 tb milk
1/2 tsp hawaij

assembly:

cardamom pods, sprinkles, anise or fennel seeds, optional

hawaij:

1 tb ground ginger

1 tb ground cardamom

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

mix together all ingredients. this will make a little more than you need for this recipe. leftovers can be sprinkled in coffee!

clues

preheat the oven to 375ºf. grease a 12-cavity donut pan and set it aside.

in a large bowl, whisk together all dry ingredients. in a separate medium bowl, whisk together all* wet ingredients. add the wet ingredients to the dry mixture and stir to combine.

*important: if the coffee is hot, do not mix it in with the wet ingredients at first. you don't want it cooking the egg! instead, mix it in at the end, after you've combined the rest of the wet ingredients and dry ingredients.

fill a piping bag with the batter and pipe the batter into the donut pans, filling each cavity halfway. this batter is a bit thin, so this could get a little messy. i stick a finger over the piping bag hole while i'm transitioning between donut cavities and when piping, it's important to go fast since the batter comes out pretty quickly.

bake for 12 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into a donut comes out clean. cool in the pan for 5 minutes. remove to a rack and cool completely.

to make the glaze, mix together all ingredients until smooth. if it seems too thick, add more coffee little by little.

to decorate the donuts, dip them halfway into the glaze and then allow excess glaze to drip off. sprinkle the tops with any desired decorations and enjoy!

-yeh!