Healthy Cranberry Coffee Cake

If you love baking with cranberries, also try our cranberry banana bread! We don’t always feel the need to make desserts healthy, but sometimes it’s nice to have a wholesome treat around. Plus, we experimented with this recipe and it’s so much like traditional coffee cake that you may not even know the difference. The recipe uses coconut oil instead of butter, oat flour in place of regular flour, and honey instead of white sugar. To make it, we simmer some cranberries with honey for the cranberry layer. Then we mix together a simple three-ingredient crumble. For the coffee cake, it’s the usual wet ingredients, dry ingredients, then mix the dry into the wet. Layer it all into a pan, and bake it until it browns. It’s the perfect not-too-sweet treat that we keep on hand around the holidays to welcome family and friends. It’s delicious at room temperature or warmed up, and tastes especially great with coffee (of course).

The dry ingredients: Milk, coconut oil, honey, eggs, and vanilla. The wet ingredients: Oat flour, baking powder, and salt. The cranberry layer: Cranberries and honey. The crumble: Oats, coconut sugar, and coconut oil.

This healthy coffee cake recipe is really flexible so you can use what you have on hand, or tailor it to your taste and preferences.

Milk – you can use regular milk, or any non-dairy milk alternative like almond milk, oat milk, soy, or coconut cereal milk.\ Coconut oil – melted coconut oil takes the place of traditional butter in this recipe, and it works perfectly to add moisture. Look for virgin coconut oil that’s purer and less refined. But you can use regular butter or a non-dairy butter alternative.\ Honey – maple syrup works well as a vegan liquid sweetener alternative. Note that you will taste the yummy maple flavor. Oat flour – you can also use whole wheat flour or a mix of both. Scroll down for tips on making oat flour with a blender. Use certified gluten-free oats if necessary.\ Oats – regular rolled oats are what we use, but you can use quick oats in a pinch. Use certified gluten-free if needed. Steel-cut oats will not work in this recipe. Eggs – you can replace the eggs with flax eggs. To make a flax egg, stir together 1 tablespoon of fresh ground flax seeds with 3 tablespoons of warm water and let sit for 5 minutes until it forms a gel. Use in the same way as eggs! Coconut sugar – any type of sugar will work like cane sugar, brown sugar, or granulated sugar. Cranberries – fresh or frozen cranberries both work equally well. They add a nice tartness and make it festive, too. If you don’t love cranberries, any type of berry will work.

If you like baking with oat flour, blend a larger amount and store it in a jar or container to save yourself a step next time! Whether or not you’re a coffee cake for breakfast person (like we are), this cranberry coffee cake tastes great with coffee or tea or whatever you fancy. It also makes a lovely dessert with some fresh whipped cream, coconut whipped cream, or vanilla ice cream.

Also, try this dairy-free lemon poppy seed coffee cake!