Apple-Cinnamon Coffeecake

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In our home, I don’t make the coffee. This is something David does and guess what? I don’t even make my own cup of coffee. He’s a pretty great guy, huh? I’m very lucky.

There’s a bit of a story behind why I don’t make my coffee. David has always been a coffee drinker. I haven’t been. I would drink a bit of it here or there, or maybe if we were out having breakfast, but not much beyond this. David (somewhat) quietly wished that I was a coffee drinker. I think he just wanted a coffee drinking buddy.

We moved from sunny California to the east coast and suddenly I find myself freezing in the winter. One morning, as a means of warming up, drank a cup or two of coffee. And before I knew it, it was comforting morning ritual. I would start work and David would make his usual pot of coffee. He’d make me a cup, or two…or three…every morning. This is how it is to this day in our home.

I’m now officially David’s coffee drinking buddy.

Our usual and favorite coffee’s have changed frequently over the years, but lately, we drink almost exclusively Starbuck’s Coffee (bold or extra bold varieties). Recently, I had an opportunity to try a coffee that was totally new to me: Peet’s Coffee. So, I thought it would be fun to not only surprise David with a cup of Peet’s Coffee, but also to make it all by myself! Crazy, right? I would even have to grind the beans myself. Yes, I know, this is just getting weirder by the minute. While shopping for Peet’s Coffee, I choose their whole bean Cafe Solano variety which is a medium roast. The package said that it was “lively and aromatic” and that sounded perfect.

While I think that making a pot of coffee — AND making David’s cup of coffee — is somewhat awesome, I decided to go one step further with it all. I decided to make him a coffeecake. See, David LOVES baked goods with his coffee. He enjoys coffeecakes, muffins, biscotti, donuts…pretty much anything that pairs well with coffee. And I just knew that if I made him a coffeecake, well, he would fall even more in love with me.

I searched around for a recipe and knowing that I have seen lighter coffeecake recipes in Cooking Light magazine, I decided to focus on some of theirs. I found one for Apple-Cinnamon Coffeecake, and with it being fall y’all…it sounded like a PERFECT companion for the Peet’s Coffee switch. I mixed up flour with sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt.

In my large glass measuring cup, I melted some butter and to that I added milk, egg, and vanilla extract. The original recipe calls for 1%, but I used skim milk. I added this mixture to my flour and mixed it all up.

I peeled and chopped two granny smith apples and added them to my mixture. My instructions at the end of this post is for an 8.5×11″ pan —  if you want to make a smaller pan, such an 8×8″, you’ll only need 1 apple.

Next, I prepare the streusel. This is made with brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon first. I mixed all that up.

And then I cut in the butter until it was all crumbly.

The apple batter was poured into my pan and topped with the streusel mixture.

It baked for about 45 minutes and when it was done….ahhhh, it smelled SO good! I’ll admit, it doesn’t look perfect here, but hey, it tasted awesome. It was VERY moist and full of apple-cinnamon flavor. And it’s lighter than traditional coffeecakes, so that’s a plus. This is definitely going to be a keeper.

Now that I had my coffeecake done, it was time for me to figure out to make the coffee. I have never used a coffee grinder before — yes, seriously. So, I open the bag of Peet’s Coffee and smelled it first…nice aroma. Then, I filled the little cup on the coffee grinder with the beans.

I turned the grinder upside down onto the little cup – is that how you are supposed to do it? I kinda just went with it as that seemed to make sense.

And voila! Just like that, I ground the coffee beans all by myself!

While I haven’t ground coffee beans before, I have made a pot of coffee. It’s been a LONG time, but I have done it. That reminds me, one time when we were first married, I thought I could warm milk for hot chocolate in the coffeemaker. Um, yeah, I guess you can’t do that.

Anyway, I put all of the ground coffee into the little coffee filter basket we have in our coffee maker (it’s a reusable one), added the water, turned it on and it started brewing.

I got our coffee cups ready. We have LOTS of coffee cups – I might do a blog post in the future just about all of our mugs. The two that I am using today is a Hallmark Father’s Day mug for David, and the fruit mug is one that Mattie bought for me at the Dollar Tree last Christmas.

We each like two Splendas and a bit of fat-free half & half in our coffee…that’s our typical, daily way. If we get a good deal on flavored creamers, we love those too. I have made my own cup of coffee a few times, but I don’t think I’ve ever made David’s.

I dished up the Apple-Cinnamon Coffeecake onto small plates.

And when the coffee was done brewing, I filled up the mugs. I wanted to take a sip right away…I was so eager to taste the Peet’s coffee, but I waited until I could surprise David with my ninja-like coffee making skills.

Finally, I shared my surprise with David — not only did I grind the Peet’s coffee beans, but I made the pot of coffee AND made a coffeecake. He had a little chuckle…he said thank you and that he loved it all. I asked him to sip the coffee — he didn’t know I had switched our usual coffee beans with the Peet’s. He took a sip and could tell right away that it wasn’t our usual…but he said it tasted great. It was more mild than our usual (remember, we usually drink bold or extra bold), but that it was full of flavor. I agreed — definitely a great coffee and I did enjoy the Cafe Solano variety enough that I can see us buying it again.

David mentioned to me that he had heard of Peet’s Coffee when we were on the East Coast, but that he didn’t think anyone was selling it there yet. When we moved to Nevada, he saw that several of our local stores sold it, so he had already planned to pick up a bag one of these days so we could try it out (he loves to try new coffees). You snooze, you lose…I beat him to it!

One last photo! Here we are enjoying our Peet’s Coffee and Apple-Cinnamon Coffeecake (some instagram action going on here):

If you want to learn more about Peet’s Coffee (they have some really interesting history on their site), or finding out what stores in your area carry Peet’s Coffee, you can find all that here:  http://www.peetscoffee.com/

Here is the recipe for the Apple-Cinnamon Coffeecake, which makes an 8.5×11″ pan. You can view the original recipe, which makes an 8×8″ pan, and includes nutritional information here: Apple-Cinnamon Coffeecake, November 2008, Cooking Light magazine.

I have put together a slide show of my shopping experience when I bought the Peet’s Coffee and other items on my shopping list. If you’d like to check that out, you can see it here: Shopping for Apple-Cinnamon Coffeecake Recipe & Peet’s Coffee Switch

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias #CBias — all opinions are, as always, 100% my own.