Coffee Flour Is Here To Make Your Life Better

Looking to add a little kick to your morning muffin? Now you can, thanks to Brandeis University biophysicist Dan Perlman. The professor has just developed coffee flour, a new ingredient that can give your favorite baked goods a natural caffeinated boost. In other words, mornings just got a million times better.

As Brandeis Now explains, the newly patented invention is made up of partially baked green coffee beans that are cryogenically milled to create a wheat-colored flour. According to Perlman, "parbaking" the beans helps preserve some of the healthy elements of the coffee that are often lost in the traditional roasting process.

So how exactly do you use it? Basically, the coffee flour is supposed to act as an enhancer, not as the main ingredient. You can mix it with regular flour and bake it as you normally would to get all the treats you already love, just with an extra punch of caffeine. Plus, since it is created from parbaked beans, using the coffee flour will give you some extra benefits that you won't get from regular flour. Need more convincing that coffee flour is the best foodie invention of all time? Here are some of the pros behind this new type of flour:

1. It's packed with antioxidants

Part of what makes coffee healthy is that it contains chlorogenic acid (CGA), an antioxidant that controls how rapidly the body breaks down glucose. Unfortunately, the roasting process for regular coffee often means the CGA gets lost. Perlman’s parbaking method, on the other hand, results in beans that can't be used for brewing, but are loaded with plenty of healthy antioxidants

2. It decreases risk of certain diseases

As previously stated, the beans used in the flour are packed with antioxidants. These antioxidants are thought to be beneficial in modulating sugar metabolism, controlling blood pressure, and possibly treating heart disease and cancer.

3. It will give you a more graduated caffeine boast

Since the coffee flour contains natural food-sourced caffeine, the effects of the caffeine will be absorbed more gradually than from your standard cup of coffee. According to Perlman, that means it will "provide a more sustained release and longer-term stimulation than you get when you drink a cup or two of coffee."

4. It's very user-friendly

Since the coffee flour is meant to be mixed with regular flour, you can use it to make basically all kinds of bakery products — from muffins to cakes. Yum.

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