Cooking with Coffee

By Food & Wine
Updated May 23, 2017
From DIY truffles to pots de crème with chocolate, chile and espresso, these genius recipes make the most of coffee.
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Three-Ingredient Prime Rib Roast

Credit: © Con Poulos
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Coffee and prime rib seem like unlikely partners, but Ryan Farr's recipe reveals they both have an earthy quality that makes them a natural match. Just be sure to scrape off any excess coffee rub from the meat before serving.

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Double-Chocolate Bundt Cake with Ganache Glaze

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Many Bundt cakes are heavy and buttery, but this one is surprisingly light and incredibly moist under its silky chocolate glaze. Strong-brewed coffee in the batter intensifies the chocolate flavor while cutting the sweetness.

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Do-It-Yourself Truffles

Credit: © Tina Rupp
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F&W's Melissa Rubel Jacobson sets out bowls of flavored ganache and dishes of coatings so guests can create their own truffles to give as gifts.

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Sweet & Spicy Jerky

Credit: © Tina Rupp
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Rachel Graville created this licoricey, Asian-inflected jerky after drinking a Manhattan Special soda, a fizzy, coffee-flavored drink created in 1895.

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Butterscotch-Glazed Coffee Shortbread Bars

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Flo Braker flavors her ethereally light shortbread with finely ground espresso beans. The best part is the golden, gooey butterscotch glaze, which becomes deliciously fudgy as the bars sit in the cookie jar.

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Chocolate & Pistachio Biscotti

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At Sona restaurant in Los Angeles and its one-year-old offshoot, Boule pâtisserie, pastry chef Michelle Myers presents exotic desserts that combine her training in graphic design with her fascination for Asian and Latin flavors (wasabi, rose water, habanero). Here, she makes a more traditional but still visually surprising cookie—the crispiest, crunchiest, most chocolaty biscotti studded with bright green pistachios.

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Dry-Rubbed Salmon Tacos with Tomatillo-Avocado Slaw

Credit: MARCUS NILSSON
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For maximum flavor in minimal time, chef Jeff Smith opts for spice rubs over marinades. After experimenting with spice blends for heartier fish, he discovered that a big pinch of ground coffee lends earthiness to the rub.

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Risotto with Capers and Espresso

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Massimiliano Alajmo is fascinated with powders. He sometimes uses them in risotto, a specialty at his Michelin three-starred restaurant, Le Calandre. His trick for risotto is to stir in a little reserved hot stock at the end, a technique that keeps the rice from getting too gummy. Here, Alajmo infuses the stock with espresso beans, then garnishes the risotto with pungent capers. Then he sprinkles the dish with ground espresso beans to intensify the coffee flavor, though they add a slight graininess.

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Bananas in Coffee Bean Syrup

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Every morning in Nha Trang, Marcia Kiesel topped yogurt with these bananas steeped in warm, bittersweet coffee syrup; they're also delicious over vanilla ice cream for dessert. Make sure the bananas you choose for this recipe are ripe but still firm, so they don't get mushy.

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German Chocolate Cake

Credit: © CON POULOS
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Sam German created the mild, dark baking chocolate called Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate in 1852; in the late 1950s, a Dallas newspaper published a recipe for German's Chocolate Cake. The dessert took the South by storm and has been a staple ever since.

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Rum-Mocha Walnut Layer Cake

Credit: © Dana Gallagher
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The coffee in this decadent recipe comes from the instant espresso powder and coffee liqueur.

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Slow-Smoked Turkey with Cane Syrup-Coffee Glaze

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If you have a grill with a lid and a bag of hickory chips you can smoke a turkey. Braising the bird first in a mix of coffee, apple cider vinegar and cane syrup or brown sugar results in marvelously complex flavors—sweet, bitter and herbaceous.

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Vietnamese Coffee Sundaes with Crushed Peanut Brittle

Credit: © Kana Okada
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The Vietnamese love drinking superstrong iced coffee combined with copious amounts of sweetened condensed milk. Joanne Chang created this simple ice cream sundae as a way to enjoy the same flavors. Shards of peanut brittle made with a generous pinch of cinnamon add great flavor and crunch.

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Double-Chocolate Layer Cake

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"This is the most fabulous chocolate cake that I've ever made," says Ina Garten, host of Food Network's Barefoot Contessa. "It's so easy and so moist and light. There's buttermilk and a cup of coffee in the batter! The frosting is just buttercream and a little coffee."

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Bittersweet Chocolate Tart with Coffee Mascarpone Cream

Credit: © Anna Williams
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The winning Italian combination of chocolate, mascarpone and coffee in tiramisù inspired this silky tart from French-born François Payard of Manhattan's Payard Patisserie & Bistro. An Italian pastry chef taught Payard that mascarpone can be whipped like cream. Another revelation: "The Italians use mascarpone the way the French use butter." Here, Payard pays homage to Italian ingredients, but with his ever-present French technique.

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Toffee Almond Crunch Cake

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With its layers of tender chocolate cake and chocolaty sour cream frosting, this dessert on its own is completely spectacular. But Patti Dellamonica-Bauler, the pastry chef at One Market in San Francisco, takes it one step further by covering it in toasted almonds and crushed toffee candy.

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Chocolate-Buttermilk Layer Cake with Vanilla Buttercream

Credit: © John Kernick
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This simple recipe makes two moist chocolate cakes. Stash the second one in the freezer for another day when you need a quick homemade dessert.

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Deep, Dark Chocolate Pudding

Credit: © Tina Rupp
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This pudding is one component of a seven-part dessert at Café Gray in New York City, where executive pastry chef Chris Broberg serves it in a chocolate-coffee tuile alongside figs in port and candied orange peel, among other sweets.

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Pots de Crème with Chocolate, Chile and Espresso

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Some chefs will do anything to get customers to try something they believe in. Alison Barshak, from Alison at Blue Bell, in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, will send out her chocolate pot de crème to any diner who doubts that the combination of spicy dried chiles and chocolate is incredibly delicious. When the customers come back, invariably they need no encouragement to order the dish.

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