Coffee Flour Is the Newest Superfood Coming to a Store Near You

Forget protein powder or alternative grains. This antioxidant-packed, nutrient-loaded flour has it all.
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Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Katherine Sacks

Some people really need that morning cup of Joe. Like can't-get-to-work-without-it need it.

I'm not one of those people. In fact, I rarely, if ever, drink the stuff, choosing water, or the occasional cuppa tea (and do make it matcha please), as my drink of choice. But when a coworker recently told me about a new, nutrient-packed coffee product that was supposedly great for baking, I perked up.

Although the name makes it sound like it's simply ground-up coffee (that would be, uh, coffee), it's actually a by-product of the coffee industry (read: #wasteless) made from drying out the outer fruit, or cherry, of the coffee plant, a material usually tossed as waste. Once dried, the dehydrated coffee fruit is turned into a powdery substance that's a cross between a flour and a spice.

And though the #wasteless angle reeled me in, it's the nutritional aspects that really sold me. Coffee flour is way more than an excuse to just get more caffeine in your day-to-day routine. (In fact, according to one producer, it only contains about as much caffeine as dark chocolate, ounce per ounce.) Gram for gram, the brand Coffee Flour touts its product as having more iron than fresh spinach; more fiber than whole grain wheat flour; more antioxidants than pomegranate; more protein than fresh kale; more potassium than banana; and less fat than coconut flour. Whoa.

Up until now, I assumed coffee flour was one of those hard-to-find, esoteric health food store ingredients. But when my colleague found it at budget-friendly Trader Joe's last week, I decided to give it a shot.

To test the coffee flour, I added it to a simple pound cake recipe, using the company's suggested ratio of 15 percent coffee flour to other flour. I was surprised how dark the flour was, and how dark it turned the cake batter; my pound cake looked like it was made with chocolate, not coffee.

Pound cake made with 15% coffee flour.

Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Katherine Sacks

The coffee flour did add a slight bitter flavor to the pound cake. But I'd bet that it would pair well with something sweeter, like chewy chocolate cookies, and would be delicious swapped into a coffee cake (make that a Coffee Coffee Coffee cake), or any sweet baked good with chocolate and a decent amount of sugar.

Plus the real reason I'd cook with coffee flour again is not for its flavor, but for the nutritional boost it offers. Of course, you aren't eating that much of it; the pound cake recipe I tested, for instance, contained only 3/4 cup coffee flour in the whole cake. But still, that provides a whole lot more antioxidants and nutrients than the cake flour the recipe originally called for, which makes this one coffee item I would definitely turn to again.