There's never a bad time for a slice of coffee cake and the same is also true for these Coffee Cake Cupcakes. With a sweet cinnamon swirl, lots of cinnamon frosting, and a crumb topping, you can't be blamed if you eat one of these cupcakes for breakfast!
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Are there any totally "random" foods you find yourself craving all the time? I have a couple and they include meatball subs and coffee cake. Very random, right? I'm not sure what it is about them, but those two foods just always sound delicious to me no matter the circumstances.
My coffee cake craving was at an all-time high a couple weeks ago and so I sat down to decide what kind I wanted to make. Then I determined that coffee cake would be so much more delicious if it involved buttercream frosting. So, I did what any person with common sense would do and I made coffee cake with frosting. But in cupcake form.
These coffee cake cupcakes are obviously a dessert as most cupcakes are. But I'm not going to pretend they aren't absolutely delicious with a cup of coffee as a mid-morning breakfast. Just saying!
❤️ Why you'll love this recipe
If you're a fan of coffee cake, you'll likely love these cupcakes! They do involve a few steps, but aside from the cinnamon frosting, they're not any more work than coffee cake.
Make these if you crave coffee cake at all hours of the day, but think it would be just a tiny bit more satisfying with buttercream frosting slathered onto it.
If you're always looking for treats to enjoy with your coffee, try these chocolate chip biscotti, too!
🗒 Ingredients
The cupcakes involve a few components, but the ingredients are pretty basic and lots of them are repeated from component to component. You might already have all of them in your kitchen as we speak! Here's what you need...
For the cupcakes:
- All-purpose flour
- Baking powder
- Ground cinnamon
- Salt
- Unsalted butter
- Granulated sugar
- Eggs
- Vanilla extract
- Whole milk
For the cinnamon swirl:
- Granulated sugar
- Ground cinnamon
For the cinnamon buttercream frosting:
- Unsalted butter
- Confectioners' sugar
- Whole milk
- Vanilla extract
- Ground cinnamon
- Salt
And for the crumb topping:
- All-purpose flour
- Granulated sugar
- Ground cinnamon
- Unsalted butter
🧁 How to make coffee cake cupcakes
These are pretty standard cupcakes and easy to make!
First you'll make the cupcake batter. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and line a cupcake tin with 12 papers. Then, in a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.
In the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, cream together butter and sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs in one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in vanilla extract.
With mixer on low speed, beat in dry ingredients in 3 additions, alternating with the milk. Mix in each addition until just incorporated.
You'll be layering the cupcake batter with the cinnamon swirl mixture, so once the batter is made, mix together the cinnamon/sugar mixture, too. That's literally all it is... Cinnamon and sugar!
Now, fill cupcake liners about ⅓ of the way with cupcake batter. Then evenly divide cinnamon swirl mixture across batter in each cupcake paper. You might feel like you have too much of it, but I promise you don't.
Top each cupcake with remaining batter. Cupcake papers should be filled about ¾ of the way.
Bake cupcakes for 17-20 minutes, until edges are golden and tester comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for a couple minutes before removing to racks to cool completely.
🍦 How to make cinnamon buttercream frosting
While the coffee cake cupcakes are cooling, you can make the cinnamon frosting. It's a simple buttercream frosting, but packed with cinnamon flavor.
In the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat butter until creamy. With mixer on low, slowly blend in the confectioner’s sugar, cup by cup until well-combined. Mix in the milk, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt and blend until combined.
👩🍳 How to make crumb topping
The crumb topping isn't totally necessary, but I like that it makes these coffee cake cupcakes a little more coffee cake-like. It's another simple mixture of flour, sugar, and cinnamon.
Then you'll take 1 tablespoon of room temperature butter and using a fork or your fingers, you'll cut the butter into dry mixture, until small clumps form.
Once the cupcakes are cooled, you can frost them (I used a Wilton 1M tip) and sprinkle some of the crumble topping over each of them.
And then pour yourself a cup of coffee (or milk if you prefer) and take a huge bite of one of these coffee cake cupcakes.
These cupcakes are fully, and I mean FULLY, packed with cinnamon flavor. As any good coffee cake should be, really. From the cake to the swirl to the frosting to the crumble, the cinnamon is large and in charge.
Is there anything better than a cinnamon swirl?? Maybe buttercream frosting? I guess it's possible that buttercream frosting is better than a cinnamon swirl... I really can't decide.
Luckily I don't have to because I get to experience it all with these coffee cake cupcakes.
🎉 More cupcake recipes
I clearly have a thing for cupcakes (who doesn't??)
- Funfetti Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes
- Rainbow Sherbet Cupcakes
- Root Beer Float Cupcakes
- Lemon Blackberry Cupcakes
- Red Wine Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Filling
- Sprinkles Strawberry Cupcakes
- Confetti Cupcakes with Champagne Custard Filling
- Raspberry Lemonade Cupcakes
- Guinness Cupcakes
- Chocolate, Vanilla, and Strawberry Cupcakes
- Sweet Tea Vodka Cupcakes
- Rainbow Cupcakes (from Life Made Simple)
Did I eat one of these for breakfast on a gloomy Tuesday morning? You'll never know. But if you know anything about me, I think you probably know the answer to that.
What odd food cravings do you get most often?
If you prefer your coffee cake in cake form, try my Funfetti Coffee Cake. Want to try it in donut form? Try my Baked Apple Coffee Cake Doughnuts. Next up, I can't wait to try this Hazelnut Coffee Cake from Rainbow in my Kitchen!
📖 Recipe
Coffee Cake Cupcakes
Ingredients
Cupcakes
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ cup whole milk
- Cinnamon Swirl (recipe below)
- Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting (recipe below)
- Crumb Topping (recipe below)
Cinnamon Swirl
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 5 cups confectioners' sugar
- 3 tablespoon whole milk
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Crumb Topping
- 3 tablespoon all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, room temperature
Instructions
Cupcakes
- Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and line a cupcake tin with 12 papers.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, cream together butter and sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
- Add eggs in one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in vanilla extract.
- With mixer on low speed, beat in dry ingredients in 3 additions, alternating with the milk. Mix in each addition until just incorporated, taking care not to over-mix.
- Fill cupcake liners about ⅓ of the way with batter. Evenly divide cinnamon swirl mixture across batter in each cupcake paper. Top with remaining batter. Cupcake papers should be filled about ¾ of the way.
- Bake cupcakes for 17-20 minutes, until edges are golden and tester comes out clean. Let cupcakes cool in pan for a few minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely.
- When cupcakes are cooled, frost them (I used a Wilton 1M pastry tip) and top them with crumb topping.
Cinnamon Swirl
- In a small bowl, mix together granulated sugar and cinnamon.
Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting
- In the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat butter until creamy.
- With mixer on low, slowly blend in the confectioner’s sugar, cup by cup until well-combined. Mix in the milk, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt and blend until combined.
Crumb Topping
- In a small bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, and cinnamon. Using a fork or your fingers, cut butter into dry mixture, until small clumps form.
Garret Janicki says
Really enjoyed the site. Thanks for posting. You got a new fan.
Lauren Moore says
I made these for somebody's birthday at work who I was only going to see in a morning meeting, and the combo of coffee cake and cupcakes went over very well.
Meg says
Do you bake the crumble topping?
Sues says
No, you just mix it together and sprinkle it over the frosting. If you want to bake the flour first, you can, but since it's such a small amount, I don't typically (I do if I'm making edible cookie dough or something like that!)
AJ says
I tried to make the cupcake base part but it came out wrong, I think i added to much mix to the bottom and it took 30+ min to bake do you have any idea how I can fix that, I followed the recipe but i only had a time crunch of an hour and i just need help
Sues says
Hi AJ- Are the cupcakes baked? Let me know what you need help with! If they took a long time to bake, it could be because you filled the papers too much, but it sounds like it's more likely an issue with your oven temperature or a combination of the two. Do you have a thermometer in the oven to make sure it's calibrated properly? Also, make sure your baking rack is not too low in your oven. If your cupcake pan is not a non-stick pan and is light colored, that can also cause bake times to increase a bit. This can also be the case if you live at a high altitude. One last issue could be expired baking powder. I hope this helps!
AJ says
I might have filled the papers to much and I probably should have moved the cupcake tin the the lower shelf to bake properly, i believe i might have had it at the top instead, and my cupcake pan is metal, I am making this recipe for a class assignment but it ended up as a few being gooey still and they were bubbling a bit at the tops like, there were actual bubbles, but also due to the time crunch I was stressing about it and this recipe is going to be used hopefully(if i can make it right) in my class's cupcake wars challenge, for a few of the cupcakes we sprinkled the cinnamon swirl mix on top going as a bunch for a few a little bit of the mix for a few and none to test it out, the ones i put the cinnamon swirl on top of seemed to have gotten done quicker but I'm not sure if that helped or if it was just to much batter in the tins