Coffee Butter Is The Sweet Breakfast Spread Your Mornings Are Missing

We've all heard of peanut butter and even cookie butter, but there's another variation of the spread that will make your breakfast much sweeter: coffee butter. It combines butter with ground coffee beans and confectioner's sugar, resulting in a spread that's creamy with a boost of caffeine all in one bite.

For inspiration, we turn to our original recipe for coffee butter from Tasting Table recipe developer Kristina Preka. For this version, Preka makes homemade butter with heavy cream and infuses it with ground coffee directly in the mixture, but you can make it even easier and use softened store-bought butter for this decadent spread.

There are also other ways to customize coffee butter: You can swap the ground coffee with ground espresso or espresso powder for a deeper, stronger flavor or use instant coffee. But if you use espresso powder or instant coffee, you should dissolve it in a spoonful of hot water first. You can also mix in a pinch of ground cinnamon or nutmeg for a boost of flavor.

The most obvious way to use this coffee butter is to spread it on your breakfast pastries. Preka recommends scones, croissants, or English muffins. We also think freshly baked biscuits, waffles, pancakes, and muffins would be delicious vessels for the compound butter. Do you like to make homemade cinnamon rolls? Swap the regular butter for this variation to add extra sweetness and a dose of energy to your batch.

To enjoy it in a more savory way, serve it with biscuits and fried chicken and skip the confectioner's sugar. After leaving that ingredient out, form it into a log, roll it into parchment paper, and chill until it's ready to use. This is an easier option if you like coffee-encrusted meats. You can serve it over grilled skirt steak, filet mignon, New York strip, or beef tenderloin.

If you have extra coffee butter, you can store it in the fridge for a few days or freeze it in an airtight container for up to six months to preserve the flavors until you're ready to use it again.