Our Coffee Flour Experiment

We heard about coffee flour a while ago and have been curious to try it, so last week we ordered a pound. Coffee flour is made from the fruit of the coffee cherry, and is packed with nutrients and antioxidants. The taste is a little woodsy and fruity – a whiff of the stuff will remind you of cocoa, raisin and carob. In recipes, it absorbs a lot of moisture (similar to other gluten free flours) so in last night’s experiments, we only used around 15% coffee flour, which we sifted into a gluten free all-purpose flour blend. With only this much coffee flour substitution, we found that the taste was subtle. We’d probably up the percentage a little next time to around 20-25%.
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The coffee cherries used to be discarded as a byproduct of coffee production. We love the idea that the coffee flour movement can make the coffee cherry into a valuable resource, create jobs and improve sustainability! It’s also great for gluten free consumers who are always looking for options. We ordered from nuts.com, but it sounds like Trader Joe's is another source.

We used the Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe from coffeeflour.com and King Arthur Flour’s GF brownie recipe.

We have some dairy free staff members, so for the cookies, we substituted coconut oil and made sure to use dark chocolate chips with no milk. The recipe calls for 1/3 cup coffee flour to 2 cups AP flour, a 1:6 ratio. For the brownies, we followed the recipe but substituted 1/8 cup coffee flour (the recipe only uses 3/4 cup of flour total, so it works out to about 15%). Both recipes turned out moist, chewy and chocolatey - we couldn't resist adding extra chocolate chips! ;)

​Have you tried coffee flour? What was your experience? Let us know what you think!

Happy Friday,
​the Vista Clara Team