Cozy Coffee Cake Muffin Recipe
Inspired by the "Farmer's Market Cinnamon Coffee Cake"
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This month I had the inexplicable craving for one of those Farmer’s Market Cinnamon Coffee cakes. I haven’t seen them in stores for ages— maybe I’ve just not looked hard enough—but my brother and I used to enjoy a slice as an after-school snack.
I imagine the cake would be too sweet for me now. It’s incredible how much our preferences change with age! I used to pick off the sugary clumps from the top of the cake and savour them on their own. Now I can barely manage sweetened oat milk in my coffee.
To accommodate my craving, and this complicated relationship to sweetness, I’ve made my own version of the cake, but in muffin form! I mean, it’s still more sweet than not but it’s definitely not as sweet as the original. Also, my version has ginger, because I love ginger!
The recipe
Total time commitment: approximately 1.5 hours (30 minutes for prep, 25 minutes for baking, 30+ minutes for cooling)
Makes: 12 regular sized muffins or 6 cafe sized muffins
Oven temp: 350
The mess
stand mixer, hand mixer, or a large mixing bowl and a whisk
4 small bowls
2 mixing bowls
a kitchen scale - a scale is necessary for this recipe, sorry but not really sorry because measuring is always best
1 tbsp
1 tsp
1/2 tsp
1/4 cup
box grater
large spoon
Ingredients
Wet:
1/4 cup of coffee or instant coffee
1 tbsp vanilla paste
2 tbsp olive oil (or a neutral oil if you don’t like olive oil in your desserts but I love olive oil in literally everything)
60g toffuti sour cream
115g canned coconut milk
15g lemon juice
1 apple, grated
Dry:
250g all purpose flour
100g brown sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tbsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp ginger powder
1 pinch of salt
Crumble Topping:
25g all purpose flour
75 g brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder
25 g unsalted vegan butter
1 pinch of salt
Method
Prep work!
Start brewing your coffee or boiling water for your instant coffee.
While your coffee is brewing, prepare a vegan buttermilk mixture in one of your three small bowls by combining the toffuti sour cream, coconut milk and lemon juice. Mix well and set aside to allow it to curdle.
In one of your mixing bowls weigh out your dry ingredients and mix them together with your hands, a spoon or a whisk. Set aside.
At this point your coffee will likely be ready. Measure your coffee into your second small bowl. Add your vanilla paste, stirring until dissolved. Set aside.
In your third small bowl, measure out the ingredients for your crumble. Mix the ingredients together until they form into small clumps and are uniform in colour. Set in the fridge.
Using your box grater, grate your apple. Place the apple shreds in your fourth and final bowl and set aside.
At this point in the process you can preheat your oven to 350.
In your second mixing bowl, add your coffee mixture, olive oil, and buttermilk mixture. Mix well until no traces of the oil are visible.
Add your dry ingredients and apple shreds incrementally. I do this by adding 1/3 of dry mix and 1/3 of apple shreds, mix, repeat until everything is incorporated.
Mix Mix Mix! I usually do a few dishes while the ingredients all get familiar with one another (about 1 minute). The mixture should only be slightly wetter than a brownie-batter.
Line a 12 cup muffin tray with muffin liners. Fill each cup about 3/4 of the way with batter. Top each muffin generously with the crumble topping you prepped earlier.
Bake for 25 minutes, keeping an eye on them to account for any oven variances. Your oven is likely much better than mine so you may have to pull them out a couple minutes earlier! To test if your muffins are done, slide a toothpick into the top of a muffin. If the pick comes out clean, they should be ready.
Let cool for 30 minutes, then enjoy!
Storing Extras!
The muffins are best enjoyed on the day they are made but they do keep well wrapped in aluminum foil and stored at room temperature for up to three days. Beyond that, I’d recommend storing them in the freezer.