recipe

hawaij coffee donuts

in

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!

black sesame cupcakes

in

we ate velveeta and talked about messiaen. i offered a cupcake to the police man at the sobriety checkpoint and he declined it. i think i wore my apron cupcake wars costume for 10 minutes before taking it off, and then we said goodnight to the cows as we left emily and evan's. it was great! how was your halloween?? get any good candy? i got a jumbo tootsie roll. it was v nostalgic and chewy. almost as nostalgic as the velveeta.

tonight we have our first curling class!!!! i cannot contain my excitement. i've never done curled before. our town has a curling place (rink? stadium? school? i don't know what you call it) and after missing the beginner's level sign up last year, we jumped on signing up this year because how could you not try it at least once when you live in the north pole? do any of you curl? quick, give me some tips. i have no idea what i've gotten myself into.

here is a recipe that i contributed to food52's new baking book! it is an updated version of these little guys. they're nutty, not too sweet, and nestled in this book alongside all sorts of fun recipes, like marian's tomato soup cake and phyllis' brown butter cupcake brownies. these cupcakes are paired with matcha frosting in the book (you can find that recipe here) but for my halloween costume i stuck with a basic vanilla buttercream (like the one here) and decorated them on the theme of... sprinkles and teddybears? i don't know, i had trouble thinking up a good cupcake wars theme and there was marzipan and a teddybear cookie cutter sitting right next to me.

black sesame cupcakes

makes 12

ingredients

1 1/4 c all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 tb unsweetened cocoa
6 tb black sesame seeds, toasted and ground in a spice grinder to a fine crumb
1/2 c unsalted buter, softened
1/4 c tahini
3/4 c sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 c milk

clues

Preheat oven to 350ºf. Line a cupcake tin with cupcake liners and set aside.

Whisk together all dry ingredients in a medium bowl and set aside.

In a large bowl with an electric mixer, cream together butter, tahini, and sugar until pale and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Add the vanilla. Reduce the speed to low and then gradually mix in the dry ingredients and then beat in the milk. Scoop into the cupcake tins and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Begin checking for doneness at 18 minutes. 

Let cool for 5 minutes in the pan and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

frost as desired with matcha buttercream (this recipe makes enough for 24 cupcakes, so you only need half!) or vanilla buttercream. enjoy!

-yeh!

yogurt covered eggs in a basket

in

happy halloween, friends!! are you excited or totally indifferent about the holiday? i've been pretty indifferent these past few years, but this year through a perfect storm combination of having an easy costume that i am so excited about*, not one but two invites to halloween parties, and the general urge to chill my bum off after a fun yet nutso month of traveling, i am more than ready to celebrate.

*i will be a cupcake wars contestant and eggboy will be the carpenter man that builds my cupcake display. in other words, i'll carry around a plate of cupcakes and make new friends and eggboy will wear a plaid flannel shirt like he does every other day anyway. in other other words, we will literally just walk out of the house.

i plan on spending the rest of my weekend celebrating the end of daylight savings time. is that something that people do? is it an excuse to make a cake and spend the day in pajamas? can it be? ok good.

and check this out, my eggs in a basket dressed up for halloween: as yogurt toast! i know, easiest costume ever. the toast equivalent to a bed sheet ghost, but we love it all the same! if you haven't jumped on the eggs + yogurt train yet, please get on this immediately. and if you haven't jumped on the yogurt toast train yet, please also get on this immediately. and then you will see how yogurt covered eggs in a basket was meant to be. the creaminess of the yolk and the yogurt balanced by a crispy buttery piece of toast makes for a very comforting, filling breakfast that will keep you energized for all of your trick-or-treating! i like sprinkling mine with my nice za'atar, olive oil, and the newest edition to my spice collection, berbere, which is common in ethiopian cuisine. but you can top yours with anything you'd like. keep it simple with salt, pepper, and hot sauce, or maybe go crazy and add caramelized onions. yum!

yogurt covered eggs in a basket

makes 1

ingredients

a slice of bread

butter

an egg

a big plop of plain yogurt (full-fat, low-fat, or fat free)

salt and pepper, to taste

any additional toppings as desired, like za'atar, berbere, hot sauce, caramelized onions, olive oil, etc.

clues

Cut a 2 1/2 or 3-inch circle out of your bread and spread both sides with a thin layer of butter. Heat a nonstick skillet over medium high heat and toast the bread and its circle on one side until brown. Flip them over, and then crack the egg into the hole. 

Cover the pan and cook until the egg whites are firm but the yolk is still runny. Remove the bread and its circle from the heat and spread with a thick layer of yogurt. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and any other toppings that you'd like and enjoy!

-yeh!

thank you so much to the american egg board for sponsoring this post! head over to their site to check out eggspert tips like when and why to use room temperature eggs, how to substitute various sizes of eggs, and best storing practices for eggs. i'll be especially thankful for the size substitution chart when my chickies start cranking out eggs of all sizes but my baking recipes still all call for large eggs!

cannellini and soffritto pizza with pancetta and parmesan + a pizza party in tuscany!

in ,

we have rules in our house about friday night pizza night:

1. we have to eat pizza every friday (duh)

2. things that have traditional pizza ingredients but aren't necessarily technically pizza count. so, like, cheese on toast with a tomato slice counts. spaghetti with tomato sauce and parmesan cheese counts. a grilled cheese with ketchup counts. this is weird, i am aware.

3. if eggboy and i are apart on a friday or if we're somewhere on a friday night where there is no pizza, we either try to plan ahead and have pizza for friday lunch or makeup for it and have pizza on saturday or sunday.

4. frozen pizza is ok. take-out is ok. planning a day ahead and starting a batch of jim lahey's no-knead pizza dough on thursday night is ideal though. i should have a reoccurring reminder on my phone for this.

5. if we're apart for a week or more, all bets are off. eat as much pizza as you want, when you want, standing over the sink, while watching reality t.v. anytime, anywhere. sending blurry pizza eating selfies and surpluses of pizza emoji are noted bonuses.  

my pizza night in tuscany was a category five pizza night: it was on a monday. a monday! and it was at sunset, with a view of the rolling tuscan hills and a big hunky pizza oven that was part of our home for the week. rebecca, alana, brandiego, and i used herbs from the garden and tons of other tasty things to build soo much pizza, it was fantastic. with some inspiration from the surrounding vineyards, i made a little riff on this prosciutto + grape pizza. it had a grape smiley face.

today, as a little reunion for our tuscany trip, the other davinci storytellers and i are posting pizza recipes inspired by our trip! since i already posted the grape pizza that i made at our party, my recipe today is inspired by the amazing cannellini beans that i ate in tuscany. they were so good and fresh, i think we were there during bean season. beans have never really been at the top of my favorite foods list (unless they were blended into hummus), but with the way these tuscan ones were prepared, with plenty of rosemary, garlic, and olive oil, i saw them in a whole new way. so in the place of sauce, this pizza has a cannellini bean puree, and it's then topped with a basic soffritto and some crispy pancetta. 

and ok, i am well aware that it is not the most supermodel-y lookin pizza, no amount of casually dropped rosemary sprigs or fresh parm or even white truffle oil from the tiny tuscan town of san miniato can fix that. but listen up! it tastes like grandma's chicken soup went on a pizza and it's good. 

cannellini and soffritto pizza with pancetta and parmesan

serves 4

ingredients

1 can cannellini beans, strained and rinsed
1/2 sprig of fresh rosemary (stem removed), plus more for garnish
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for finishing the pizza
Kosher salt and pepper
5 ounces chopped pancetta
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1/2 large onion, finely chopped
1 batch Jim Lahey’s pizza dough (divided into 2 parts, not 4), or pizza dough of your choice
1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese, plus more for serving

white truffle oil, optional

 

clues

Preheat the oven to 500ºF.

In a food processor, combine the beans, rosemary, garlic, olive oil, a good pinch of salt and a few turns of pepper and blend until smooth. Taste and adjust seasonings as desired.

In a medium skillet, cook the pancetta until crispy. Remove it to a plate, keeping the fat in the pan. You’ll want a thin coating of fat on the pan to cook the vegetables, so pour some off if needed, or if the pan is a bit dry, supplement the pancetta fat with a drizzle of olive oil. Heat the fat over medium high heat and add the vegetables with a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring, for 7-10 minutes, until the vegetables have softened. Salt and pepper to taste.

On a baking sheet or pizza peel, flatten out half of the pizza dough. Top it with half of the bean mixture, pancetta, vegetables, and parmesan and bake until the crust is splotchy with brown spots. Begin checking for doneness at 5 minutes. Repeat with the other half of the pizza dough and toppings.

Finish the pizzas with fresh rosemary, a drizzle of olive oil or white truffle oil, and more parmesan and enjoy with a glass of davinci chianti!

-yeh!

as a davinci wine storyteller, this post was created in partnership with davinci wine!