Contrary to popular opinion, there’s a lot more you can make with coffee beans than just coffee and fall-themed lattes. There are tons of recipes that you can make using coffee beans right in your own home kitchen! Coffee beans add a great, full flavor to tons of foods and can be used in nearly any meal. They offer a nice complimentary taste to any recipe, sweet and savory alike. And if you get inspired to try using them in your cooking, you can easily find whole coffee beans in a variety of roasts at your local coffee shop.
Below, we’ve put together a couple of our favorite simple recipes you can make with coffee beans. While some of them require grounds, most coffee shops will be happy to help you grind your beans if you don’t have a grinder at home.
Chocolate-Covered Coffee Beans
While a lot of people know about it, chocolate-covered coffee beans can make for a great snack. They also make great gifts, as they can be portioned out fairly easily. Made by coating any kind of roasted coffee beans in any kind of melted chocolate, they are also not particularly hard to make (though if you feel it’s too daunting to approach, many coffee shops sell them ready to eat!).
Chocolate Types to Try
When it comes to the type of chocolate used, there are tons of options. A great one to try first is dark chocolate, which offers alkaloids that make caffeine’s effects feel less jittery and more energetic (AKA the “happy chemicals” from chocolate). You can also get creative and make your own unique chocolate if you have the equipment for it. For example, you can melt white chocolate (or your preferred type of chocolate) and then sprinkle in a small amount of coffee grounds into the chocolate. This makes it to where you get coffee flavor on the outside layer in addition to the bean inside.
Caffeine Content
Each coffee bean roughly has about 10mg of caffeine. This means that about 15 are equal to a 20oz cup of coffee, and 8 are equal to a small cup of coffee. So make sure that you don’t overdo it!
Coffee Butter
Another common thing to do with coffee beans is to use them to make cooking and baking supplies. This includes coffee butter, which is a versatile flavor enhancer that you can use to cook all kinds of other things. Try substituting it in any recipe that calls for butter or shortening to add a slight coffee taste to any eating experience.
Coffee Butter the Easy Way
You can use a food processor or blender to make your own coffee butter at home using butter that you already have and your choice of coffee grounds. After blending the butter with the grounds, melt the mixture at a low temperature to ensure even distribution before cooking with the batch that you just made.
Coffee Butter from Scratch
For more control over the flavors and ingredients, you can try making coffee butter completely from scratch using heavy cream and a food processor. As the cream is churning in the processor, you can control everything that goes into it including the amount of coffee grounds. The ingredients can all be whatever you like; your imagination is the limit!
Ideas for Using Coffee Butter
Coffee butter is an extremely versatile ingredient. Cook with it, add it to toast, or add it to pancakes for a unique take on everyday meals. You can also make a braise and add coffee beans as one of the final ingredients. This will give you a more refrigerator-stable result that you can use at several meals, not just one dish.
We hope these home-cooking coffee bean recipes have inspired you to add some extra flavor to your day-to-day cooking! We’ll be covering more coffee bean recipes later on, so be sure to check back with our blog regularly.
