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June 10, 2007 2:15 PM

Do I have to use instant espresso/coffee for baking?

I want to make espresso brownies but most of the recipes I'm finding ask for instant espresso. Can I use fresh ground coffee (espresso grind - which I have in my pantry) instead? Why is instant espresso preferred?

posted by spec80 to Food & Drink (18 answers total)

Because it dissolves and doesn't leave a grainy texture in your baked goods. Even very finely ground coffee will still have a texture. If you don't want to use instant, use brewed- adjust the liquids in the recipe accordingly.
posted by headspace at 2:18 PM on June 10, 2007

If you use ground unbrewed espresso, your brownies will be somewhat gritty, I would Imagine. But, if the recipe calls for actual liquid coffee, why not?
posted by longsleeves at 2:21 PM on June 10, 2007

Seconding longsleeves - if the recipe calls for liquid coffee, fresh ground will work fine. Be aware that it usually has more of a kick than the instant stuff, but that may be preferable!
posted by mogotron at 2:34 PM on June 10, 2007

yep, just reduce your water or milk by the amount of liquid coffee you use.
posted by thinkingwoman at 2:39 PM on June 10, 2007

Nth-ing everyone's comments on grittiness/adjusting liquid levels.

OT: Share recipe when completed, please?
posted by fuzzbean at 2:43 PM on June 10, 2007

What fuzzbean said. Recipe!
posted by twiggy at 2:49 PM on June 10, 2007

Best answer: Whenever I cook with brewed coffee I add the sugar to it and reduce it to a syrup (boil then simmer until reduced by half, between 30 and 50 minutes). Then, as the others have said, you can lower your liquid amounts. The good thing about a syrup rather than using regular coffee is that you have less water and more room for your cream, milk, etc. You do have to babysit it, though, since coffee will burn easily. Coffee syrup is nice to keep around in the fridge for ice cream, though, so it's worth doing.
posted by monkeymadness at 3:00 PM on June 10, 2007 [2 favorites]

If you don't want to give up the milk in the recipe, use dried milk instead. You could even dissolve the milk into the brewed coffee.

I don't keep instant coffee around (ugh!), so for recipes, I brew my normal stuff. Whether I use it to replace the full amount of liquid in a recipe. If there seems to be enough water to "brew" the instant called for, I just replace the water and instant with brewed coffee. If there is only milk, I use the nonfat dried milk trick with brewed coffee.
posted by nita at 3:02 PM on June 10, 2007

I have used up to 2 tbs of very finely ground coffee before, just tossed into an oatmeal cookies recipe. I had a coffee grinder, and ground it a bit finer than your average espresso. It was just fine.
posted by Juliet Banana at 3:34 PM on June 10, 2007

Response by poster: Adapted from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop for Chewy-Dense Brownies.

1/2 cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces
4 oz unsweetened chocolate, cut into small pieces
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 oz milk chocolate, cut into small pieces
3/4 cup walnuts toasted and chopped

coffee syrup: 2 tablespoons espresso, 5 oz water, 1 1/4 cup brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350 F
Line an 8 inch spare pan with foil that covers the bottom and reaches up the sides. Grease the bottom and sides of the foil with butter.

Melt butter in a medium saucepan. Add the chocolate pieces and stir constantly with a whisk over very low heat until the chocolate is melted.

Remove from heat and whisk in (cooled) coffee syrup, eggs (one at a time) and vanilla. Stir in the flour and the salt. Stir in the milk chocolate and nuts.

Scrape the batter into prepared pan, smooth the top and bake for 30 minutes, until the center feels just about set. Remove from oven and let cool.

===

They just finished cooling. It's very fudgy and very good :) Thanks all!
posted by spec80 at 6:34 PM on June 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

monkeymadness: Since most of what distinguishes the taste of brewed coffee from the taste of instant is volatile oils, I'd be very surprised to find that simmering a sugared brew until it reduces by half leaves you with something better-tasting than a decent freeze-dried instant. Have you done a double-blind taste comparison test?
posted by flabdablet at 6:47 PM on June 10, 2007

Best answer: Also: if you manage to grind your coffee beans until they're about as fine as flour, I can't see how they'd make your baked goods feel gritty. If you're not doing your own grind, perhaps you could play with beans pre-ground for Turkish?
posted by flabdablet at 6:50 PM on June 10, 2007

Response by poster: I'm going to try that for my next batch.
posted by spec80 at 7:22 PM on June 10, 2007

Best answer: Funny, but Cook's Illustrated covered exactly this topic in the current issue. They tested three recipes with espresso powder, instant coffee powder, and double the amount of coffee powder.

The first recipe, pots de creme, tasted weak with instant coffee but fine with double the amount of instant coffee. Brownies weren't so lucky:

The opposite was true with the espresso brownies, which exhibited a bitter, overwhelming coffee flavor when twice the amount of instant coffee was used. Tasters preferred the brownies made with a one-to-one conversion, which had a strong, but not undesirable, coffee flavor.

I think they used instant powder, not ground coffee, because powder is already-brewed coffee that's been dehydrated. Grounds have not yet been brewed, so hot water has not unlocked the flavor compounds within them. If you want to use actual non-instant coffee, I suspect you'll have to brew espresso in the amount that the recipe's powder level would make, then use the brewed espresso, removing an equal amount of other liquid from the recipe to compensate.

Their conclusion:

In the end, if you can’t find instant espresso powder, we recommend replacing it with the same amount of instant coffee in baked goods and with double the amount in creamy applications like puddings, frostings, and mousses, which contain proportionally more chocolate as a percentage of the total ingredients.

posted by mdeatherage at 8:16 PM on June 10, 2007

If you've ever made espresso or coffee, you know that there's the part you drink - coffee - and the part that's left behind - grounds - in the steamer basket / strainer / filter.

Grounds are mildy toxic - emetogenic. If you eat a filter full of coffee grounds you will puke it up. It doesn't taste nice, and since caffeine is one of the fast extractors the spent grounds have almost none.

Instant espresso and instant coffee are dehydrated coffee, the product of dehydrating coffee that's already been extracted with water to get the good stuff out of the beans. That's the good stuff you want in your brownies - not the stuff that makes up spent coffee grounds.
posted by ikkyu2 at 1:00 AM on June 11, 2007

flab-
I've never had a problem with it. I figure I'm looking for more of a generic "coffee taste". It's certainly easier to use the instant, and I use it when I have it. I'm a fiend for homemade syrups, though, so I always like to have a couple around anyway.
posted by monkeymadness at 10:22 AM on June 11, 2007

Don't use ground coffee, no matter how fine you grind it. It'll still be gritty, taste funky since you're dealing with the whole bean not just the tasty extractives, and generally disappoint you. I tried to do that once, and it didn't work out well, despite my grinding it into powder.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 2:21 PM on June 11, 2007

monkeymadness: Since most of what distinguishes the taste of brewed coffee from the taste of instant is volatile oils, I'd be very surprised to find that simmering a sugared brew until it reduces by half leaves you with something better-tasting than a decent freeze-dried instant. Have you done a double-blind taste comparison test?

Presumably the brewed coffee in question is made with arabica beans, while virtually all instant coffees are made from robusta beans. This would result in a major taste difference, but you're quite right in saying that you'd lose the volatile oils which are a significant part of the flavour of fresh coffee.

If you were going to get anal about it, I'd vote for fresh espresso, as it'd keep your liquid low and flavour high. At home, I use a french press and simply make the coffee extremely strong (triple strength or worse!) if I'm going to use it to bake or ice.
posted by mek at 5:09 AM on June 19, 2007