I’m so excited to share with you my new recipe for gluten free coffee cake muffins. A reader asked me a few weeks ago if she could use my gfJules Gluten Free Muffin Mix to make gluten free coffee cake muffins and I thought the idea was brilliant. And with my mix, it was so easy! My family absolutely went gaga over these. I know yours will too!
There are few things in life as universally loved as coffee cake. Chocolate chip cookies are up there, but some people prefer oatmeal cookies, and beyond that, honestly fan favorites are split between chocolate and vanilla, tart and sweet, pie and cake … you get the idea. But coffee cake? Who doesn’t love coffee cake? (Here’s my recipe for gluten free coffee cake, by the way!).
So using the transitive property (if a = b and b = c, then a = c … the extent of my math skills), who wouldn’t love a gluten free coffee cake they could hold in their hand, take on the bus or in their lunch, grab as a snack, or nosh on for dessert? Hence, the birth of the gluten free coffee cake muffin.
This concoction is certainly delicious. It has a delightful swirl of cinnamon goodness in the middle and is topped with an irresistible crumbly streusel that makes it all the better. My husband actually asked why there weren’t more swirls of cinnamon in the middle (he suggested 3 layers!) because he loved it that much. So if you’re inclined to want more, double or triple the swirl ingredients and go all in on the swirl. You only live once.
Using my award-winning gfJules Gluten Free Muffin Mix, you only need to add a few simple ingredients and I’ve provided you dairy-free and vegan options below. If you have my gfJules Gluten Free All Purpose Flour, but not my muffin mix, follow along with the “from scratch” instructions.
Just be sure not to use another muffin mix or flour blend that is rice flour based or has bean flours in it. When you want a soft, yummy muffin, you need to use the right gluten free flour or it may turn out dry and crumbly or gritty and taste funny — now who would want that??
I hope your family loves this recipe as much as mine does. I had to fight them off to get pictures, if that’s any indication of how fantastic these are. And your kitchen will smell like heaven when they’re baking!
If you love this recipe, please leave it a 5-star review!
Gluten Free Coffee Cake Muffins
Gluten Free Coffee Cake Muffins
These delicious gluten free coffee cake muffins bring all the yummy cinnamon-sugar flavors of coffee cake into a portable muffin!
Ingredients
Muffin Ingredients:
- 1 gfJules™ Muffin Mix can (add 1/4 cup more sugar if you like a sweeter muffin)
- 1 tsp. ground cinnamon (optional)
OR
- 1/4 cup brown or white sugar or coconut palm sugar (note: for sweeter muffins, add up to 1/4 cup additional sugar)
- 1 1/2 cups gfJules™ Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon (optional)
PLUS
- 1/2 cup butter or nondairy alternative (e.g. Earth Balance® Buttery Sticks)
- 2 large eggs or egg substitute of choice (I like 2 Tbs. flaxseed meal, chia or salba steeped in 6 Tbs. very warm water)
- 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup sour cream (dairy or nondairy) OR plain or vanilla yogurt, dairy or non-dairy (So Delicious®)
- 1/4 cup milk of choice (dairy or non-dairy)
Swirl Ingredients:
- 1 tsp. ground cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice
- 3 Tbs. brown sugar
- 2 Tbs. melted butter or non-dairy substitute (e.g. Earth Balance® Buttery Sticks)
Crumble Topping Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup (67 grams) gfJules Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 4 Tbs. softened butter or non-dairy substitute (e.g. Earth Balance® Buttery Sticks)
- 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350ºF (static) or 325ºF (convection).
Oil or line muffin cups and set aside (makes 12-16 muffins, depending on size).
Cream the butter with 1/2 the can of gfJules Gluten Free Muffin Mix to integrate it with the butter.
OR
If baking from scratch, cream butter with sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. In a separate bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients.
To the butter mixture, add the eggs, vanilla and sour cream and beat well.
Add dry ingredients or the remaining muffin mix (plus 1/4 cup sugar, if using) to the wet mixture along with 1/4 cup milk until thoroughly mixed.
The batter will be thick but not so thick you can't spoon into muffin cups. If it is too thick to spoon easily, add another 1/4 cup milk to your batter and beat to integrate (different milks, yogurts and sour creams may require slightly more milk added to the batter).
Prepare the swirl ingredients in a separate bowl.
Spoon batter into prepared muffin tins, filling only half full. Spoon a dollop of cinnamon swirl onto the batter, then add more batter on top to fill the muffin cup 2/3 - 3/4 full.
In a separate bowl, cut the butter into the topping ingredients with two knives or a pastry blender until a pebbly mixture is formed. Sprinkle evenly on top of all the muffins.
Bake for 30 minutes or until lightly browned and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with only dry crumbs. (note: if baking on convection setting, check muffins after 20 minutes of baking and again five minutes later if not done; convection tends to cook baked goods faster and you don't want to over-cook the muffins.)
Cool before removing from tins.
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It looks delicious but there is no coffee!! I think it is an American thing to call cinnamon cake, coffee cake!! It would be so much more delectable if it could be coffee flavoured. You can use instant expresso or strong coffee for the swirl flavouring.
Hi Mary, I think Americans are looking for an excuse to have cake for breakfast! LOL But yes, coffee IN the cake is also a thing, and I have several recipes using coffee as a flavoring, as well! My gluten free Coffee Cake Pound Cake might be more to your liking. Let me know what you think!
~jules
This recipe was great made them today just don’t no why some of them really rose then others and there kinda hard I used Walmart brand gluten free flour and lactose free milk please let me no what I did wrong I will be using this recipe a lot from now on my favorite dessert and breakfast I’ve been looking for a lot of gluten free recipes and this websites awesome just sometimes some of them don’t turn out well
I finally made these and they were soooo good!!!! Since we were stuck in the house for my birthday (which fell on Mother’s Day weekend), I decided to give this recipe a try. Time to order more muffin mix as these were gone not long after coming out of the oven!
Thank you!!!!!
So wonderful to hear, Karen! (not the stuck in the house for the birthday part, but the having delicious gluten free coffee cake muffins for your birthday part!). Happy birthday to you! So happy you at least had something yummy there to celebrate with!!!
~jules
I just made these. They are delicious! I doubled the recipe and was able to get 24 large muffins out of it. I had to triple the swirl recipe though. I did not make very much at all. I did add more sugar. I’m glad I did because these muffins are not very sweet. With the added sugar, they were still not too sweet, which is actually good. This recipe is a keeper!!! Thanks so much. I don’t know where I’d be without your flour and amazing recipes! Thanks again.
Aw, thank you, Estelle! I’m so glad you are loving my gfJules Flour and recipes! That makes me so happy to hear!
And good tip on the tripling the swirl if you double the muffins! I should add a note to that effect on the recipe card!!!
~jules
Would it be possible for you to include nutritional information with your recipes?
Hi Linda, I haven’t had the time to add those yet. It’s just me creating and writing and photographing all my recipes at this point. I can tell you though that if you copy the ingredients and paste them into an on-line nutritional calculator, it will get you to a fairly accurate number for each recipe. I hope that helps! At some point I will add the nutrition for my recipes, I’ll just have to be able to hire someone to help me do it! I hope you understand!! In the meantime, enjoy the recipes!
~jules
Has anyone tried making these with a sugar substitute like swerve?
Awesome, will be trying these soon.
Love this muffin mix. My 9 year old granddaughters have been mixing up muffins and changing the add ingredients, chocolate chips, blue berries, peanut butter …
They are going to love this one.
Thank you
I made these and they were amazing! Light and soft . I did use my own flour concoction. I used oat flour, almond flour , quinoa flour, sorghum flour. I didn’t measure just added a little of this and a little if that..
thx for the great recipe
So glad you loved the recipe, Sara!
~jules
I made these yesterday and they are delicious. Mine weren’t as domed on top but more level but it didn’t change the taste or texture. Some of the cinnamon swirl leaked out on to the muffin tin and when it cooled it tasted just like candy. I did use your flour. Will definitely make again.
Sounds divine — the cinnamon-swirl candy part! So glad you tried this recipe and loved it! If you have a convection setting on your oven, try that next time for more doming on muffins, or use my gfJules Muffin Mix for the most beautiful crowned muffins every time. But taste and texture are supreme — so glad you loved them!
~jules
I’ve made these muffins twice now and both times they exploded and the bottoms weren’t cooked fully. The first time I probably over beat the batter. The second time I didn’t beat it at all I just mixed everything in with a spoon. Can someone tell me what I’m doing wrong? I am using almond flour. Could that be the issue?
Hi Kaitlyn, your hunch is correct that the almond flour is the culprit. When a recipe is written for a specific gluten free blend of flours, that blend must be used, or as close an approximation based on ratios as possible. Have a look at this article on gluten free flours — they are all quite different and work together (or not) to make the recipe as pictured from the recipe author. I urge you to try my recipes with my award winning gfJules Flour blend — no more exploding muffins will be your just reward!
~jules
The first time I made this recipe I thought they came out dense. So I made them again but I sifted the mix twice (well worth the extra step) and they were absolutely amazing. Definitely will do again also I made 1/2 mix coffee cake crumb and the other 1/2 blueberry.
Hi Margo, I’m so glad you didn’t give up on the recipe! Thanks so much for coming back to let us all know what worked for you, in terms of sifting. Particularly when using measuring cups to measure flour (as opposed to weighing the flour), it can be easy to get too much flour in the measuring cup because it’s compacted; sifting can help that a lot.
Enjoy!
~jules
CAN I BAKE THESE AT 400 DEGREES FOR 10 MINUTES THEN REDUCE THE OVEN WITH THE MUFFINS STILL IN OVEN BUT TURN THE OVEN TO 350 AND CONTINUE BAKING
Hi Barbara, you could try that baking method, but I haven’t made those baking adjustments with this recipe myself. Is there any reason why you’d want to do that instead of just baking at 350F the whole time?
~jules
I love your mixes!! Today I tried the coffee cake muffins with the muffin mix, twice! I don’t know what I’m doing wrong but it sure isn’t turning out like your picture. When i cream the butter with half the mix, it isn’t turning fluffy. it gets patted down and hard to move. I’m a little confused with the instructions and unsure when to add the eggs, milk and sour cream. Do you have any advice for me?
Hi Melissa, so sorry you’re having troubles with this recipe. Quick question: are you adding the other 1/2 of the can of mix? I suggest beating 1/2 the mix with the butter because there’s some sugar in the mix and that’s what works well to cream with the butter. If you like a sweeter muffin, next time, just cream the butter with 1/4 cup extra sugar … then add the eggs, sour cream, vanilla and milk. At that point you can slowly stir in the entire can of mix to that butter/liquid ingredients mixture. Let me know if that makes sense. You can always call us or email [email protected] for more help anytime!
~jules
Coffee Cake is a guilty pleasure. You did great with how thick and tall they are. I hope to try very soon.
Thank you, Kathy! They really turned out nicely. I hope you get to try the recipe soon!
~jules
What is it about streusel that is so darn appealing? These look amazing Jules, and I love how perfectly tall they are!
I know – streusel must be programmed into our DNA! LOL!
~jules
That topping is calling my name but really I might have to make these asap as my oldest wanted coffee cake at Starbucks this morning. I bet she’d love these!!
Yes! Portable Coffee Cakes!
~jules
me Me ME, I would love a portable coffee cake! I love the look of these, that crumble!
I know, the crumble gets me every time, Kristina! YUM!
~jules
Seriously nothing like a good streusel topping! I am in the same camp as your hubs… more swirls!
ALL the swirls!!!!
~jules
When I first saw these, my jaw dropped! They look so amazing and I can only imagine how delicious the crumble topping is.
Thanks so much, Jenna! I’m so glad they look good to you, too!
~jules