In our family, coffee and sweet treats go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Of course, we all enjoy coffee without sweets, but rarely the other way around. We criticize fancy restaurants that bring dessert but don’t offer coffee until afterward.
Hot coffee proves the perfect beverage to counter sweet flavors and lubricate cakey textures and flaky-crusted pies. It soothes the chill of frosty ice cream concoctions and cuts the sweetness of candy bars.
My mom baked a homemade sweet nearly every day when the five children lived at home. She served the dessert right after dinner with percolator-hot coffee with a splash of cold milk. Family vacations always entailed midafternoon Konditorei (pastry shop) breaks — complete with indulgent pastries and specialty coffees. Today, the “Konditorei” almost always sits next to the electric coffee maker in my parents’ kitchen.
In my house, the workday starts with strong, black coffee and a banana. On the weekends, I crave that combination in a decadent muffin format. Think of all the specialty flavors of the local coffeehouse crammed into one handheld sweet — chocolate, toasted pecans, cinnamon, vanilla, cream — with a coffee backdrop thanks to espresso powder.