This super moist pumpkin spice latte bread is nothing but basic, with a coffee cream cheese filling and coffee flavored crumb coating! (Jump directly to the recipe.)
<vocal fry>”#SqueeEE! Oh. Emm. Gee. BECKY(*)! It’s Pumpkin Spice Latte season!!!”</vocal fry> is basically what I heard in my firehose of social media stream a few weeks ago. I get it. Folks (and when I say folks, I mean women of a certain age and demographic) really REALLY love #PSL. And though I am not one to yuck someone’s yum, the appeal of pumpkin spice lattes is fairly low for me. I don’t hate it. I just don’t crave it the way it seems everyone else does.
I do, however, love the IDEA of pumpkin spice lattes. The flavor combination of milky coffee and pumpkin spice seems ideal. But when I drink said beverage, all I really taste is super sweet syrup masking a overly smoky dark-roast coffee-adjacent beverage. I own the fact that I’m a coffee snob. It’s exacerbated by my partner AJ, who in every road trip has elevated his ridiculous coffee making to the next level. First he was bringing a French press with him as we road trip. Then his own beans. Now he has a hand held ceramic burr grinder to grind said beans. And then, in this past trip, we took a detour to a Target so we could buy him a water kettle. We did this because he fired up the gas camp stove in one too many motel parking lots so that he could boil water to make his French press coffee. It was an example of both high and low, fancy pants and super hick. An electric kettle just made the most sense.
Even though AJ was happy to make coffee on the go, we still need to buy beans. 7 weeks on the road means we couldn’t pack enough beans from our favorite home roaster. Besides, AJ likes to have his beans roasted within a week of brewing (did I mention he’s WAY more of a snob about coffee than I am? He is). Our trip across the country had us going to some amazing third way coffee shops to get beans and coffee drinks. We found them by reading Yelp reviews…though we looked at both GOOD reviews and BAD reviews to determine if the coffee shop as appropriate for AJ’s palate. If the coffee shop got a bad review from someone complaining that they didn’t carry pumpkin spice or vanilla syrup, we knew it was for us. We’re those folks.
But now that I’m home, I realized that I can take those flavors of a pumpkin spice latte and make something a little bit better. And, in typical Irvin fashion, I had to mix it up and make it a little more…elaborate. When Melissa Clark of the New York Times accused me of not only painting the lily but bejeweling and shellacking it, she wasn’t wrong. This is not your basic pumpkin spice latte bread. But I still think the Beckys of the world will enjoy it. I know AJ did.
*I’ve always felt bad for all the Beckys of the world. How that name got associated with white girl millennials is fascinated. That said, growing up, the only Becky I knew was a sassy Asian girl, Becky Hong. We grew apart and I have no idea what happened to her (I’ve tried looking for her on Facebook but do you have any idea how many Becky Hongs there are? THOUSANDS). So Becky, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry I used your name in the manner that I did, thereby perpetuating the stereotype of white girl Beckys.
(Not So Basic) Pumpkin Spice Latte Bread with Coffee Cream Cheese Filling and Coffee Crumb Topping
Ingredients
Crumb Topping
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 70 g
- 1/4 cup dark brown sugar 55 g
- 2 tablespoons Turbinado sugar sometimes called Sugar in the Raw (you can substitute additional brown sugar if you don’t have this)
- 1 teaspoon instant coffee
- 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice blend make your own with my recipe!
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 4 tablespoons melted butter unsalted
Cream Cheese Filling
- 8 ounces cream cheese at room temperature (see headnote above)
- 1/2 cup white sugar 100 g
- 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon instant coffee
Bread batter
- 1 cup all-purpose flour 140 g
- 3/4 cup rye flour 100 g (or just substitute regular all-purpose flour, see headnote above)
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice blend make your own with my recipe!
- 1 cup canned pumpkin puree 225 g
- 1 cup white sugar 200 g
- 1/2 cup dark brown sugar 110 g
- 2 large eggs
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tablespoons melted butter
- 1/3 cup strongly brewed coffee cooled
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray a standard 9 x 5 bread pan with cooking oil, then line the sides and bottom with parchment paper, leaving an inch or two overhanging the edges. Place the pan on a rimmed baking sheet to catch any stray crumbs or batter and to make removing the pan from the oven easier.
- Make the crumb topping by placing the flour, both sugars, instant coffee, pumpkin pie spice and salt in medium-sized bowl. Stir with a fork until ingredients are blended, then drizzle the melted butter over the ingredients, tossing with the fork, until lumpy crumbs start to form and the dry ingredients have absorbed all the liquid. Place in the refrigerator while you make the rest of the ingredients.
- Make the cream cheese filling by placing all the ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Beat the ingredients on medium low speed until the instant coffee is dissolved and the filling is smooth, about 3 to 5 minutes. It might take longer if your cream cheese is cold.
- Make the bread batter by placing both flours, baking soda, baking powder, salt and pumpkin pie spice in a large bowl. Using a balloon whisk, stir the dry ingredients together vigorously until uniform in color.
- In a different bowl, place the pumpkin, both sugars, eggs, oil, melted butter, coffee, and vanilla extract and stir together with the same whisk.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold together with a spatula until the dry ingredients are absorbed.
- Assemble the bread by spreading half the bread batter on the bottom of the lined pan. Pour the cream cheese filling on top of the bread batter.
- Carefully pour the remaining bread batter on top of cream cheese filling and spread it over the cream cheese filling.
- Take the crumb topping out of the refrigerator and sprinkle it over the top of the bread batter, breaking up any really large chunks by hand. Bake in the oven 70 to 80 minutes or until a toothpick or skewer inserted into the middle of the bread comes out with crumbs sticking to it. Let cool on a wire rack in the pan for 1 hour or until room temperature. Remove from pan by grabbing the edges of the overhanging parchment paper and lifting up.
Jill Silverman Hough says
You are so fun and funny and such a good writer! Love your mixing bowl, too–an original Lin? Hugs to you.
Irvin says
Ha! Yep. Totally a Lin original. I made them earlier this year!
Shikha @ Shikha la Mode says
“Becky” actually came from black culture! It started being used to describe the white girlfriends of black men as part of the stereotype that black men don’t like dating black women. So “Becky” became a derogatory term in that sense. That’s also why Beyonce said “Becky” in her song 🙂
Irvin says
Whoa! Thanks for the info! I don’t really use the word “Becky” that often and I probably should have looked more into the history of it before I used it. I’m always fearful of appropriating someone else’s culture. A quick google search shows that the term Becky goes way back to the mid-1800s, but black culture definitely popularized it. I’ll use it much more judiciously from now on!