Gluten-free coffee cake? Yes, make that a gluten free blueberry coffee cake—and guess what? It’s really good, soft and moist, the streusel is crumbly but not dry and you will never know it’s gluten free. I think the days of sandy or super gummy gluten-free desserts are gone.
There are so many easy to find gluten-free flours you can work with beyond just gluten-free all purpose flour that you can mix and match to yield a tender crumb. For this recipe I used a combination of gluten-free flour, almond flour and coconut flour — all flours that are relatively easy to find in the health food section of most grocery stores. The only thing that may be a bit harder to find is the xanthum gum for the binding. You don’t need much xanthum gum, but you do need it, so if you buy it, I recommend Hodgson Mill’s brand. Since you only need about 1/4 teaspoon at a time, the 1 tablespoon packets are super handy.
Now how truly good was this? Let’s just say picky-eating Matt had some and enjoyed it. I’m sure if I told him it was a gluten-free coffee cake, he would have been much more hesitant. We once tried GF gingerbread cookies and nearly choked on the sandiness while both grabbing for the one glass of water within reach. Lucky for me, he was generous enough to actually push it towards me so I could gulp my mouthful, while he was trying cough out the sawdust GF cookie.
See why I didn’t tell him it was GF? He was pretty soured from that experience. Does that mean I’m trying to convert my family – or you guys? Um, no. But I figure we might as well all have options. Because these days, it seems like everyone knows someone who has gone GF or has to be GF.

Gluten-free Blueberry Coffee Cake
Ingredients
- 1 cup gluten-free all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup almond flour
- 1/3 cup coconut flour
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon xanthum gum
- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup canola oil
- 1 1/2 cup brown sugar, slightly packed
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 2/3 cup milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 6 oz. blueberries
- Streusel crumble
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
- 1/4 cup brown sugar, slightly packed
- 4 tablespoons granulate sugar
- 1/4 cup almond flour
- 1/4 cup gluten-free flour
- 1/3 cup Diamond of California Pecans, chopped
- 6 oz. blueberries
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
Instructions
Preparation: Heat oven to 350 degrees and line 9x9 pan with parchment and cover with gluten-free bake spray.
To make streusel:
Place all ingredients in a bowl and toss with toss and mix with a fork until mixture becomes crumbly. Transfer the mixture to the refrigerator to chill while making the coffee cake.
To make cake batter:
- Whisk to combine all flours, baking powder, salt and xanthum gum in a bowl; set aside.
- Place oil and egg in a stand mixer bowl fitted with a whisk attachment and beat until well combined. Add in both sugars and switch out whisk for the paddle attachment and beat until creamy. Add in the dry ingredients in three additions, alternating with milk and blend after each addition. Add in vanilla and beat until combined. Turn off mixer and fold in blueberries.
- Bake for 30 minutes or until cake is just set. Remove from oven. Remove chilled streusel from refrigerator and crumble over top of cake. Return cake to oven and bake for an additional 25- 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out with moist crumbs (not wet batter). Let cool for 20 minutes before cutting.
Gorgeous, love the blueberries and streusel topper!
Just delicious! Love the blueberries and I can’t get enough of streusel 🙂
Finally gluten free looks as good as the original. That crumb on that cake is simple temping me to buy blueberries out of season!
This coffee cake looks so good!!
Oh does this look exquisite! I cannot wait to give this beauty a whirl!
Oh this looks so delicious and the perfect treat to have with my coffee!!
Thank you for making this!! I am still struggling to bake decently for my GF daughter- I will be making this right away Naomi!
Looks wonderful! I love the colander too! Nice job with all the gluten free recipes, are you gluten free at all?
I love having options! My mom is gluten free so I always appreciate finding a lovely, delicious, and relatively easy sweet treat I can bake for her.
My coffee is begging that I make this coffee cake! Yum!
Hi Sophia – No, I’m not gluten free, but a few people I know are, so I like to have options for them. And even though I’m not gluten-free, I still enjoy GF desserts.
This coffee cake looks incredible! I love your use of almond/coconut flour here. I often find many baked goods so heavy from the use of refined flours, so I can’t wait to try yours 🙂 Always love finding delicious and healthy options. So beautiful, too.
Beyond amazing, I need to get in the kitchen and make this now!
America’s Test Kitchen’s “How Can It Be Gluten Free” book on Amazon has a recipe for gluten-free flour (included in the preview) that, according to their extensive testing of it and other gluten-free flours, is probably the closest you can get to wheat flour in flavour and texture in baked goods (for commercial they recommended King Arthur as second best, and Bob’s Red Mill if you’re desperate and don’t mind a slight bean off-taste).
~42 ounces of gluten-free flour
24 ounces white rice flour (Bob’s Red Mill, preferably)
7.5 ounces brown rice flour (Bob’s Red Mill, preferably)
7 ounces potato starch
3 ounces tapioca starch
0.75 ounces nonfat milk powder
(you still need xantham gum, but a different amount for each recipe)
I mention it because you talked about sandiness, their preview of the book discussed a few things with gluten-free baking that help eliminate it. Not using cornflour (too starchy), allowing the batter to rest for 30min to absorb liquids completely, reduce fats (as the flour doesn’t absorb as much) by swapping in sour cream, cream cheese, white chocolate, or almond flour, increase liquids so the starches are fully hydrated and therefore don’t bake up gritty, etc. It looks pretty awesome, going to have to get it to learn how to modify recipes to be gluten free by example.
This recipe looks like it does that stuff pretty darned well, I’ll have to try making it for my pal’s gluten-intolerant partner; we have a lot of frozen blueberries, luckily.
Should be awesome, thanks 🙂
Love those blueberries!! Such a gorgeous recipe. As always!
I love drink coffee all these years, And the gluten-free coffee cake looks fit for me.
Thanks.
I need GF options too in my repertoire because a few of my friends can’t have gluten. Love this recipe!! Especially the streusel 🙂
This looks absolutely delicious! I can’t wait to make this and am curious to see how the different flours will add to the texture of the cake. You had me at blueberry haha 🙂
Great recipe! Looks absolutely amazing, thank you for sharing!
This turned out beautifully, and it’s delicious. The texture is Devine. Thank you from a celiac with a coffee cake craving. 🙂
I made this coffee cake today for a charity bake sale at work. This was the second day of the bake sale and quite a few people had asked for gluten-free options the day before. I took on the challenge without telling anyone (in case it didn’t work). I made it and took it to work while it was still warm. It was a hit! With that said, I made a few tweaks as I went. For the cake batter, I used a 10″ springform pan (because that is what I had), added an extra 1/2 t of almond and coconut flours, decreased milk (fat free was all I had) to 1/3 c, added @ 1 c of Greek yogurt and 1 T of lemon juice. For the streusel crumble I toasted the pecans for a few minutes while I melted the butter, added a little extra cinnamon and 2 T of lemon juice. Because of my “adjustments,” it took about 10 minutes longer for the cake to set and an extra 20-30 mins. for the entire cake to bake. The next time, I will turn down the oven during the extra mins. to allow the middle to firm up without browning the edges (they caramelized so the crust was delicious). I let it cool on the rack for 10 minutes then took it to work in the pan (I was running “late late”) and served it on a pretty plate. It is a stunningly beautiful and delicious cake that I will make again. Thank you Naomi.
Hit send too fast – I will turn down the oven to 325 degrees during the extra mins.