If you have an abundance of grapes this season, delight your kids with back-to-school grape coffee cake recipe with crumble topping. Any color grape you have on hand will work since this is the absolute best coffee cake recipe, with an even better 2-part crumble topping. Plus, at the end please leave us a comment with your own favorite back to school traditions – I’m making a list!
If you’ve got hungry kids this back-to-school season, throw this grape coffee cake recipe together and fill their tummies with goodness. This recipe was inspired by one of my favorite books, The Tasha Tudor Cookbook. Yes, Tudor fans – she has a cookbook.
We highlighted another of her recipes here – Warm Cheese Souffle. Ah, that one’s a keeper.
Oh, here’s another one inspired by her – our family’s holiday tradition of a Warm Cheese Souffle
Here’s the book, if you’d like to check it out:
Growing Grapes
If you’re a gardener, grapes have a lot to recommend them as a backyard fruit. A fruit tree can take more than five years to fruit after it’s been planted. Most grapes vines will fruit inside three years after planting. Sweet!
One of my favorite varieties to grow is Concord and you can read about their virtues here.
If you do consider growing them, here are some good mulch ideas from Reformation Acres specifically for grapes.
Growing grapes is a good project for homestead kids because grapes are simple to maintain, but do require some work. They’re a good challenge in the garden, if you’re looking for a homestead kid project – especially if you home educate. Plus, the best part for kids, grapes are really fun to harvest. A quick twist and whole bunches pop off into the basket. Inevitably, some fall into your mouth while you work, too.
Grape Recipes
If you only want the grape coffee cake recipe, just keep scrolling. However, if you STILL have grapes leftover from the harvest, I suggest you try these other great grape recipes:
- Make Your Own Organic Raisins from Fresh Grapes
- Honey Sweetened Grape JELLY from Grow a Good Life
- Ginger Grape JAM from Nitty Gritty Mama
- Freeze some grapes for a healthy snack with The Spruce Eats
- Here are 7 Grape Smoothie recipes with I love Smoothies
- Lacto Fermented Grape Jello with Learning and Yearning
Grape Coffee Cake Recipe with Crumble Topping
Cooking with grapes is as easy as cooking with berries so don’t over-think this recipe. Any color grape will work well, though I prefer sun-ripened green grapes. If you’re using store bought grapes, use red or purple grapes since most green grapes from the store really aren’t ever ripe enough.
Grape Coffee Cake with Crumble Topping
Here’s a tasty way to use up the grape harvest! Make a new back to school tradition with this delectable grape coffee cake with healthy, wholesome ingredients.
For Grape Coffee Cake
- 1/2 Cup Raw sugar (You can use any granulated sugar)
- 1/2 Cup Butter
- 2 Eggs (Room temperature)
- 2 Cups Whole milk (Fresh)
- 4-5 Cups Fresh ground flour (Our favorite is Einkorn)
- 1 1/2 tsp Sea salt
- 2-3 Cups Grapes (Any color will do but we like green and purple)
For 1st Topping*
- 3/4 Cup Raw sugar
- 1 Cup Flour
- 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp Nutmeg
- Pinch Sea salt
- 1/2 Cup Butter, room temperature and very spreadable
For 2nd Crumble Topping*
- 3/4 Cup Coconut sugar
- 1 Cup Flour
- 1/2 Cup Butter, cold cut in 1 Tbsp amounts
Mixing Coffee Cake
- Preheat oven to 375F/191C.
- Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time until light and fluffy.
- In a separate bowl sift together dry ingredients. In another bowl slight beat the eggs into the milk.
- Alternating the dry ingredients and the milk mixture, combine all ingredients with the creamed butter. Mix well after each addition.
- Gently fold in the grapes. If your grapes are smaller, use three cups. If your grapes are some of the larger kind, use two cups. It’s your coffee cake, though, you add as many grapes as you want!
- Generously utter a 9 x 13 glass baking pan. Pour batter into pan.
*Mixing and Placing the Toppings
- For the first topping, mix all ingredients together in a bowl until completely incorporated. You will end up with something that looks like a granular frosting. It’s important that the butter be room temperature for this.
- Spread this “frosting” over the top of the coffee cake batter as evenly as you can. This adds a delectable sugary layer to this tart grape coffee cake.
- For the second topping, mix all the ingredients and cut together with a pastry cutter or two knives. Sprinkle over the top of your coffee cake. This topping can be doubled.
- If you’d rather eat your own head than go to the trouble of making TWO toppings this morning, no worries. Just double or even triple the second topping recipe and sprinkle it on top.
To Bake the Coffee Cake
- Place into a hot oven and cook for about forty minutes.
- Cover with foil for the last 15-20 minutes to prevent scorching of the sugary topping. Know your oven and test the cake for done-ness periodically. This is a dense cake so it will take some time to bake, but don’t let it burn.
- Let rest for five minutes. Serve hot with butter or send along cold in a school lunch as a treat.
Back to School Traditions
Since we home educate, the beginning of our school year is sort of fuzzy – we don’t really have a firm stop date and we don’t really have a firm start date. Every day is school! However, once our groups and outside classes start in September, I like to do a few special things to give us a “back-to-school” feeling. Here are a few things we do:
- Make this grape coffee cake recipe OR cinnamon rolls – it depends on how the before goes, honestly.
- I set the breakfast table with our good plates and put out all of the school supplies I’ve gathered. There’s something so exciting for this nerdy mom to set out all the pencils, paper, pens and glitter glue we’ll need for countless projects throughout the coming year. I love learning with my kids!
- Everyone gets to spend the day in their jammies if they want to, just because we can.
- When we lived in the city, we would also go to a museum or the zoo or someplace usually jam packed with people during the summer. With all the publicly educated kids back in school, these places are a lot emptier. For this outing, everyone MUST put town clothes on, but jammies can be reapplied after we get home.
Here are few more back to school traditions from our readers:
Jaime, also a home educator, shared this:
“We don’t ever finish school, but every year, either in June or end of August, we do Ice Cream Dinner to celebrate our school year. All ice cream. We usually invite a tonne of people, have them bring toppings, and call it a party. My boys love it. This is going on 12 years now, and we never miss the chance.”
Jess, mom to lots of fabulous girls, share:
“We do a “back to school tea party”. We make fancy finger foods and break out the fancy china. I started it when McKenzie went to preschool and they have asked for it every year since. We discuss our goals for the year and something that we want to do better at home. It’s a lot of prep but so worth it!”
Allison shared a memory from her childhood:
“Dad gave each kid a father’s blessing. Mom filled the freezer with grabbable snacks (homemade cookies usually) to go with the sandwich and fruit cup. Everyone did their homework together, helping the slowpoke until they were done.”
