The only thing better than a real cooking show just may be Jennifer Garner’s #PretendCookingShow. The actor has shared everything from family dessert recipes to breakfast smoothies with her Instagram followers, and it’s always a delight to see what she comes up with next. The Family Switch star recently shared a dreamy espresso coffee cake recipe and the adorable Instagram reel was exactly the kind of pick-me-up we needed.
Garner’s go-to coffee cake recipe comes from food blogger and cookbook author Lindsay Landis, who posts to Instagram as @loveandoliveoil. The espresso coffee cake has simple ingredients like butter, sugar and, of course, espresso, but Garner, a mom of three herself, shares how to modify the recipe to make it kid-friendly, too. In addition to leaving out the espresso powder in the recipe’s crumble topping, she only uses the espresso glaze on half of the cake.
“Kids can pick,” Garner proclaims in the video, “with the glaze or without.”
Garner sliced her cake up and gave the slices away in friend (and children’s book author) Marla Frazee’s Little Free Library—but we think this bake would be just as delish enjoyed at home. To copy this cake, you’ll need to gather butter, sugar, brown sugar, flour, instant espresso powder, cinnamon and sea salt for the crumble. Garner chose to skip the espresso powder to keep things kid-friendly, and you could lower the amount if you wanted to keep the coffee flavor but lower the caffeine content.
For the cake, you’ll also need butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, sour cream, baking soda, flour, baking powder and a bit more sea salt. (If you have plain yogurt on hand but no sour cream, that makes an easy ingredient swap.) For the glaze, you’ll just need some powdered sugar and brewed espresso—but if you only have espresso powder, simply combining some with hot water using the package instructions can work, too.
You can find full instructions in Garner’s post or on Landis’s website, but it’s pretty simple to put together. Grab your 8-inch by 8-inch baking pan and line it with parchment paper, then get to work on the crumble. As Garner says, crumble is pretty forgiving—if you’ve made it before, then there’s not much reason to carefully measure out your ingredients. Just mix the melted butter with the rest of your ingredients until you’ve got luscious, buttery crumbs. Set it aside to cool.
To make the cake, cream together butter and sugar with a mixer until fluffy. Add in the egg and vanilla and mix well. Then add the sour cream and the dry ingredients a bit at a time, alternating. Once everything’s incorporated, spread the batter into the prepared pan and add the crumble to the top. Bake for about 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
While the cake cools, make the glaze by combining espresso and powdered sugar until smooth. Drizzle the finished glaze over the cooled coffee cake—or leave it out if you want to go light on the espresso content.
While not all coffee cakes have actual coffee flavoring in them, we like where this recipe creator’s head is at. In her blog post about the espresso coffee cake, Landis explains that she’s combining both the American idea of a cinnamon, crumble-topped coffee cake and the more literal idea of a coffee cake.
Garner describes the cake as “so yum,” and we’re inclined to believe her. Since coffee consumption can have some health benefits, pairing a slice of this cake with a nice cup of java might just be a perfect coffee break treat.
