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These delicious coffee cake muffins are moist, with a tender crumb, and a cinnamon sugar swirl in the middle. They’re topped with a crumbly, buttery streusel overflowing and a drizzle of icing. And the best part is you can eat them for breakfast (preferably with coffee).
Table of Contents
These muffins are in honor of my grandmother who made the most out-of-this-world delicious coffee cake recipe. It’s her recipe—made into muffins.
Love coffee cake? Try gluten-free coffee cake, brown butter blueberry coffee cake and pumpkin streusel muffins next.
Coffee Cake Muffin Ingredients
Here are the simple ingredients to make these coffee cake muffins. Skip to the recipe card for exact measurement.
- Flour: an all purpose flour is great for this recipe, but you could also swap it for a cake flour or a 1:1 gluten free flour (I like Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 GF Flour)
- Cinnamon: a key ingredients for coffee cake muffins! You’ll find it in the muffin batter, cinnamon swirl, and crumb topping.
- Light brown sugar: for the batter, topping, and cinnamon swirl.
- Melted butter: Good quality butter, like Kerrygold, yields the best results. I also tried these with dairy-free butter and they worked well.
- Milk: either whole milk or a dairy free milk like almond milk! You could also use sour cream or greek yogurt if you have those—I tested this!
- Baking powder, baking soda: to activate the batter and help them rise.
- Eggs: room temperature eggs are best because they mix into the batter easier.
- Vanilla extract and salt: for flavor.
- Icing: a mixture of powdered sugar and milk make the best sweet drizzle.
How to Make Coffee Cake Muffins
Here are the step-by-step instructions with photos to make this coffee cake muffin recipe. Jump to the recipe card for the printable recipe and to watch the video.
- Crumb topping: Combine the sugars, cinnamon, and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk in the melted butter, then add the flour and combine with a rubber spatula.
- Dry ingredients: Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda and salt in a small bowl.
- Wet ingredients: Whisk together milk, melted butter, vanilla and eggs in a large bowl.
- Combine batter and rest: Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and stir using a rubber spatula until just incorporated, being careful not to over-mix. Let the batter rest for 15-20 minutes.
- Fill and add cinnamon swirl: carefully scoop the muffin batter in to the pan halfway. Sprinkle the cinnamon swirl in the middle of each then top with the remaining batter almost all the way to the top.
- Top with streusel: Pile on the crumb topping. This recipe makes a lot of crumb topping so use as much or as little as you want. You can always freeze it for another batch.
- Bake: Bake the muffins at 425°F for 5 minutes then reduce the heat to 350°F and finish baking.
- Icing: whisk the milk and powdered sugar in a small bowl. Drizzle it on top of the baked coffee cake muffins.
Tips for Bakery-Style Muffins
- Don’t over mix the batter. Be sure to mix the batter JUST until it’s incorporated and not any longer.
- Let the muffin batter rest so the baking powder activates in advance. If you have time to cover and chill the muffin batter for an hour (or overnight) you can do that.
- Fill the muffins all the way. That’s why we’re using so much crumb topping!
- Bake the muffins in every other muffin tin and bake two batches. You get tall domes of muffins this way!
- Keep an eye on them in the oven. All oven temps vary, so pay close attention to the muffins at the end.
- Start the oven at a high temp to introduce hot air quickly and make them rise fast.
FAQs
Although coffee is in the name, there is no coffee in coffee cake. I’ve received so many complaints about this:). It just goes really well with coffee.
This is such a personal preference. If you don’t think these muffins have flavor, they may just not be for you, and that’s cool. I love the rich, sweet, butter, cinnamon taste. Two things you can do:
First, use a quality butter with rich flavor. Second, add a layer of cinnamon sugar inside the muffin batter.
This can happen if you use too much butter or not enough dry ingredients. Make sure you measure the ingredients correctly.
How to Store
Store coffee cake muffins in an airtight container at room temperature for 3-4 days or in the fridge for up to a week. Place a paper towel on top of them before closing the lid to prevent them getting soggy.
To freeze, place them on a baking sheet in the freezer for an hour. Wrap individually in plastic wrap and transfer them to a freezer bag or airtight container. Freeze for up to 3 months. Let them thaw overnight in the fridge and reheat in the microwave.
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Coffee Cake Muffin Recipe
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Ingredients
Crumb Topping
- 1/3 cup granulated sugar
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter melted
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour gluten-free if needed
Cinnamon Swirl
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
Coffee Cake Muffins
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour gluten-free if needed
- 1/2 cup brown sugar packed
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 2 large eggs
Icing
- 1/4 cup powdered sugar
- 2-3 teaspoons milk
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425°F. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners then spray with nonstick spray. Set aside.
- Crumb topping: combine the sugars, cinnamon and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk in melted butter then stir in the flour using a rubber spatula. Set aside while you make the muffin batter.
- Dry ingredients: in a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.
- Wet ingredients: In a large bowl, whisk together the milk, melted butter, vanilla and eggs.
- Finish the batter: Add the dry ingredients and stir with a rubber spatula until just incorporated, being careful not to over-mix. Let the muffin batter rest for 15 minutes.
- Scoop and bake: Carefully scoop half the batter into the prepared muffin pan. Sprinkle the cinnamon swirl in the middle of each then top with the remaining batter almost all the way to the top.
- Generously top each with the reserved crumb topping, using your fingers to gently press the crumbs into the batter to help it stay in place while baking. It will be a lot of crumb topping on each muffin. Bake muffins in preheated oven for 7 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350°F degrees and bake another 16-18 minutes, until set and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few moist crumbs
- Icing: Combine powdered sugar and milk in a medium bowl and whisk until smooth. If the glaze is too thin, add more confectioners' sugar as needed.
- When the muffins are done, cool for 10 minutes and drizzle the glaze on each muffin using a small spoon.
Notes
Video
Equipment
- Muffin Tin
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
These came out super bland. I bake all the time and followed the recipe exactly. You could barely taste the cinnamon and they weren’t very sweet. They texture was also a little off.
Hi Kait! I’d love to learn more about how you measured your ingredients. I’ve made these many times and they’re always almost very sweet for me. The amount of cinnamon is definitely a personal preference, but I’ve heard a few people say this. I’m going to test these with a cinnamon-sugar swirl in the middle soon! That may solve both of your problems:) Stay tuned!
My crumb topping disappeared into muffin batter while baking. What did I do wrong?
Hey! This can happen if you use too much butter or if you don’t use enough flour. I’d double check how you measure the ingredients! There’s so much crumb topping on these so even if some melts you should still have plenty. Hope this helps!
Best muffins ever. I find buttermilk is the secret to baking, so that’s what I used here. Oh, and the second time I added frozen wild blueberries. Simple and simply amazing!
Buttermilk is such a great ingredient for muffins! Thanks!
Don’t be afraid of the negative reviews, these are DELICIOUS. My husband absolutely loved them! They definitely aren’t bland or in need of more sugar. I followed the recipe exactly and they were great. If anything the topping makes them super sweet (like most coffee cake) but they are perfect with a cup of coffee. The only thing that happened to me was they looked a little deformed 10 minutes into baking. I ended up needing more like 15-17 minutes in my oven and then they rounded out and they looked prettier after I did the glaze 🙂 will make again, thank you!
Thank you so much!! I completely agree:) Thanks for sharing what you did—I’m sure it will be helpful for some!
It’s really good
Thanks, Kenzie!!
These muffins came out great! They are the perfect amount of moistness while still making you feel like you need a drink of coffee or milk with them. Also just the right amount of sweetness!! I will say that I only used about 3/4 of the crumb topping because I couldn’t fit it all on top of the muffins & I also took them out about 5 minutes earlier which I think made them more moist!
Thanks, Kayely! I totally agree with you!
Havent finished baking these yet but already cant stand the way this recipe is written. *icing* should be written as another process, not anotger bulletpoint in the ingredient list. Using weight measurements vs volume would make this so much better. Ended up with about 3 times more crumble than what can even fit in 12 muffin cups. Dont make these, find a better recipe.
Hi Ross, thanks for the feedback. The ample amount of crumble is purposeful, they’re supposed to be loaded high with it. We’ve tested this recipe countless times and love how much crumble is in them so that’s a personal preference. We recommend patting the crumble down into the filled muffin tins to fit more. The pictures you see in this post were done this way. We’re working on updating our baking recipes with weight measurements, but we’re a tiny team and a small business, so appreciate your patience. Finally, we updated the bullet point which was a simple mistake. Have a good one, thanks.
These looked delicious but lacked flavor and were not sweet, surprisingly. I would definitely add white sugar to the batter and cut the flour a lot in the crumble if I ever made them again. Trying to figure out how to give these more flavor now that they are made.
Surprising to hear! We just made these and they had tons of flour and we find they’re almost too sweet. We tried swapping in sour cream for thee milk and they were great. There’s a lot of sugar in these and the topping so I wouldn’t recommend adding more. You could add more cinnamon or nutmeg if you want. We’ve also made them with blueberries.