If you’ve never heard of Hawaij (“huh-why-edge”), that’s ok because I certainly hadn’t either until I stumbled across it on Molly Yeh’s blog where she presented us with some hawaij-coffee donuts. What? Needless to say, I was intrigued! I’m all for incorporating new spices into my dishes and this one sounded like a winner, mostly because it’s used with coffee. Because right now coffee is everything. It turns out there are two versions of hawaij, a Yemeni spice blend, that are used in both coffee and soups. Here we use the coffee blend where ground cardamom and ginger are the stars of the show, followed by a mixture of nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon. Sometimes anise and fennel seeds are included but I opted to skip them. Add a pinch or two of the spice to your coffee grounds and boom…you have a better-than-Starbucks holiday brew. Not only can you add Hawaij to your coffee, but now you can also add your Hawaij-spiced coffee to cookies! Double win!
