Healthy Cranberry Coffee Cake
This Healthy Cranberry Coffee Cake is the perfect, cozy fall breakfast or dessert. It's dairy-free and made without refined sugar or flour. You’ll be amazed at how much it is like a traditional coffee cake!
This healthy cranberry coffee cake was supposed to be an oatmeal breakfast bar. I went to bed thinking about breakfast bars and woke up thinking about my Grandma's cranberry coffee cake. I don't know what happened overnight, but I can assure you my idea became a few hundred times better.
Every summer when my sister and I were kids we would spend a week with our Grandma at her rustic cabin at the edge of her favorite fishing lake. She cooked her meals on a discarded antique wood-burning stove that she found and hauled out of the lake. Can you imagine not burning EVERYTHING in an oven that's temperature is controlled by the amount of wood you feed it? Ya, neither can I.
She'd feed us constantly. Like, we'd barely get through one meal and there would be another in front of us. First, there was the pre-breakfast snack, then breakfast, then an after breakfast snack, then a bite before lunch, then lunch, and then …. it went on like this all day.
My favorite was the after breakfast snack; it was always cranberry coffee cake. Or some sort of coffee cake, I remember it being sweet/tart so I think it was cranberry. Oh man, I could eat a whole pan of that stuff, even if I'd already finished my pre-breakfast and breakfast.
I've asked my mom to see if she can find the recipe and when she does I'll make sure to share it with you. It's full of flour, butter, and sugar and totally worth pigging out on.
THIS cranberry coffee cake is a different story. I've replaced the butter with coconut oil, ground healthy oats to replace the flour, and used honey rather than processed white sugar. I'll admit that I was skeptical when I started working on this recipe. I'm not one for making desserts healthy, but this one totally worked out.
While this cranberry coffee cake is not as good as Grandma's (obviously!), you'll be amazed at how much this resembles a traditional coffee cake.
Even though I'm calling this Cranberry Coffee Cake, I've been eating it for breakfast all week long. Is that wrong? I mean, it's really like eating a bowl of oatmeal in cake form. And besides, it's called COFFEE cake, so obviously it's meant to be eaten with coffee. At breakfast. Obvs.
We should be calling it Healthy Breakfast Cranberry Coffee Cake. Maybe I should change the name. What do you think?
More Delicious Sweet Treats:
- Sweet Harvest Pumpkin Brownies
- Best Healthy Zucchini Brownies
- Cranberry Coconut Macaroons
- Must Make Coconut Fig Squares
- Dairy-Free Lemon Poppy Seed Coffee Cake
Healthy Cranberry Coffee Cake
If you love this recipe as much as we do, let us know with a 5-star rating!
Ingredients
The Coffee Cake
- 1 cup milk, I use almond, but any neutral flavoured milk will work
- ½ cup coconut oil, melted
- ½ cup honey
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 ¾ cups oat flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
The Cranberry Layer
- 1 lb fresh or frozen cranberries, thawed if frozen
- ¼ cup honey
- 2 tablespoons oat flour
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
The Crumble
- ¾ cups oats
- ½ cup oat flour
- 2 tablespoons honey
- ¼ cup coconut oil, melted
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Grease an 11×9″ baking dish with coconut oil.
- In a large bowl, whisk the milk, melted coconut oil, honey, eggs and vanilla. Add the oat flour, baking powder, baking soda, and sea salt and stir until just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish.1 cup milk, ½ cup coconut oil, ½ cup honey, 2 large eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 ¾ cups oat flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- To make the cranberry layer, mix the cranberries, honey, oat flour, and the lemon juice in a medium-sized bowl. Spread the cranberries evenly over the top of the coffee cake batter.1 lb fresh or frozen cranberries, ¼ cup honey, 2 tablespoons oat flour, 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- To make the crumble, mix the oats, oat flour, honey, and melted coconut oil in a small bowl. Sprinkle this over of the cranberries.¾ cups oats, ½ cup oat flour, 2 tablespoons honey, ¼ cup coconut oil
- Bake the cranberry coffee cake in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes, or until it puffs up slightly and the edges start to brown. Let the cake cool for 10 minutes before serving.
Hello… Can I use fresh blueberries or dried cranberries instead as cranberries are currently out of season ?
Many thanks
Suzanne
Fresh blueberries would make a good substitute!
Hi Kristen,
I am excited to try this recipe! I am new to baking (about a year) and I’m really interested in learning to substitue properly for ingredients and just do things well. So I have a few questions before I start the recipe. Thanks in advance!
1) You ask for 9×11 dish. I have 9×13 or 9×9. Should I use 9×9?
2) Could I use maple syrup instead of honey?
3) I will be using frozen cranberries. Is it enough to thaw overnight in a tupperware container in the fridge? Should I discard (drink!) the juice from thawing or include that as well?
4) Do I make oat flour by just blitzing rolled oats into fine powder?
5) Can I sub some almond flour for part of the oat flour in the coffee cake part?
6) Can I freeze some of the cake and how long does it last in the fridge?
THANKS SO MUCH!!!
Nadja
1) 9×9 will make them taller and you may need to cook them a few minutes longer.
2) That should work fine.
3) You can simply put them in a sieve and run them under hot water for a few minutes to thaw them. They don’t take long.
4) Yes!
5) I haven’t tried that but there’s a good chance that it will work.
6) Coffee cake normally freezes well. It should keep for 2-3 days at least in a sealed container on your counter.
I hope that helps!
I have never heard of an 11×9″ pan.
Is this a glass pyrex dish or did you mean 13×9 inch pan?
Mine is 11×9. You could use a 13×9 but the cake will be a little thinner. 🙂
What type of oats are you using?
I used quick oats!
Do you think I could substitute blueberries for the cranberries?
I suspect that they would work well. You may want to reduce the sugar though as blueberries are much sweeter than cranberries.
Is it just me or I don’t see where the coffee is added into this cake? ? what part is it added
Coffee cake is just a type of cake … no coffee in the cake itself!
Do you think I could bake this in a 9 inch springform pan?
You totally can … just keep an eye on it and adjust the baking time as needed. 🙂
Oh boy…….. these sound SO good Kristen! I love cranberry, and am so putting this on the list to make!
Yes yes! It really was good. 🙂
Cranberry coffee cake is one of my faves this time of year. Your version looks unbelievably good. And I loved reading about your grandother’s wood stove. My grandmother’s was much the same only she never baked unless for a holiday. I’m trying to picture what it’s like to bake in that kind of an oven and I seriously cannot. I also wonder how anyone got around without a vitamix or food processor… ?!
Ha ha it’s so true! We just got back from a holiay and before we left we joked about packing the Vitamix. I couldn’t live without mine!
This looks so yummy and festive Kristen- I can’t wait to try it!
Thanks, Heather!
The cake looks great and I have been meaning to bake something with coffee for a while now… I hope to be able to buy cranberries soon, I haven’t seen any yet. And I love the fact that there is no sugar in it!
Have you looked in the frozen section? I will often find them there and they’re one of the few things that I find are just as good frozen as fresh. 🙂
Very cool. So I see that you used all oats and not a flour/oat combination. I’m planning to do something similar, and have been reading conflicting reports about oat flour’s ability to sustain leavening. Do you think that would also work well in a cake, or do you think oat flour is more suitable to a coffee cake or quick bread?
Yes, I ground the oats to make oat flour rather than using regular wheat flour. I suspect that oat flour would not work so well in a cake. It’s pretty heavy so I don’t think it would give the right texture. I think it would end up being one of those cakes that gives gluten-free “healthy” baking a bad rep. 🙂
Oh yum! As a food blogger, I can totally relate to you falling asleep thinking about food and doing thes same when you wake up. Sometimes I jot down ideas on a sticky note beside my bed in the middle of the night! lol Love the “make-over”. I did the same thing this afternoon with a muffin recipe. Fun when it turns out, isn’t it?
Such a great idea to keep a notepad at your bedside. I’m totally going to start doing that!
By the looks of this, you’d never know it’s healthy. It looks so decadent and gorgeous and ahhhI want a piece!
And it really doesn’t taste like it is healthy either. Win!
Coffee cake is my jam–cranberry coffee cake definitely takes it a step further. Pinning! Happy Friday 🙂
It’s so good, isn’t it?! Thanks for the pin!
I really need to buckle down and make some gf/vegan coffee cake. I used to LOVE it, but it’s been years (like 8 years….)
You do, girl! It’s so good. 🙂