Instant Coffee substitute

Best substitute

Espresso powder

Use ½ tsp espresso powder for every 1 tsp instant coffee

Best for chocolate cakes and brownies

Close match

In a recipe, instant coffee is dry, water-soluble, roasty bitterness, and its usual job is to make chocolate taste more like chocolate rather than to taste of coffee itself. It adds no liquid, no acid and no structure, which is exactly why it is so useful in batters and rubs. The closest swap is espresso powder, but use half as much, since it is darker roasted and roughly twice as strong per spoonful: half a teaspoon of espresso powder for a teaspoon of instant coffee. Strong brewed coffee works if you can afford the liquid, at 1 tablespoon of brewed coffee per teaspoon of instant, minus 1 tablespoon of another liquid from the recipe. Cold brew concentrate goes in at 2 teaspoons per teaspoon of instant, again minus the liquid, and tastes smoother and less bitter. Coffee extract adds aroma with no bitterness at about half a teaspoon per teaspoon. Finely ground coffee beans substitute 1:1 only where grit will go unnoticed, such as a dry rub or a crumb topping, because they never dissolve.

Other instant coffee substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Strong brewed coffee or espresso
Different texture
Use 1 Tbsp strong brewed coffee for every 1 tsp instant coffee, and remove 1 Tbsp of another liquid from the recipe
Actual liquid coffee, brewed at double the usual strength, standing in for the dried version.
What changes
Best for
cakes and cupcakes, cake soaks and tiramisu, custards and ice cream bases, glazes
Tastes the best of any option, because it is real coffee with its aromatics intact rather than something that was dried and rehydrated. It is rounder, brighter and more acidic than instant, so a mocha frosting made with it reads fresher and less flatly bitter. The whole difficulty is the liquid: this fails outright in a dry rub, a no-bake filling, a shortbread or anything where there is no other liquid to remove. If the recipe calls for more than about a tablespoon of instant coffee, brewed coffee adds too much water to absorb.
3Cold brew concentrate
Taste and texture differ
Use 2 tsp cold brew concentrate for every 1 tsp instant coffee, and remove 2 tsp of another liquid
Coffee steeped cold for many hours and strained, roughly two to three times the strength of a brewed cup.
What changes
Best for
frostings and buttercream, ice cream and no-churn desserts, tiramisu soaks, chocolate cakes
Adds less liquid per unit of coffee flavour than brewed coffee does, which makes it the more practical liquid option. The flavour difference is real and often welcome: cold brewing extracts much less acid and far fewer bitter compounds, so a mocha buttercream made with concentrate tastes rounder and lets the chocolate lead, where instant coffee pushes forward with a sharper roasted edge. If you specifically wanted that bitter edge, this undershoots it.
4Finely ground coffee beans
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by volume, only where grit is acceptable
Whole beans ground as fine as your grinder will go, used as a dry coffee flavouring rather than brewed.
What changes
Best for
dry rubs for beef and pork, streusel and crumb toppings, coarse-crumbed cakes and cookies, chocolate bark
Perfectly good in the right place. In a coffee-and-chilli rub on a steak the grounds are meant to be there, and in a crumb topping they read as texture. Be firm with yourself about where they do not belong: coffee grounds never dissolve, so in a glaze, a custard, a mousse, a buttercream or a drink they feel like fine sand and no amount of straining fixes it once they are mixed in. Use a fine espresso grind rather than a drip grind if you have the choice.
5Coffee extract
Different taste
Use ½ tsp coffee extract for every 1 tsp instant coffee
An alcohol-based coffee flavouring that carries aroma without bitterness or dry bulk.
What changes
Best for
whipped cream, buttercream and frostings, custards and panna cotta, delicate cakes
Excellent anywhere a smooth texture matters, since it introduces nothing that can grit or speckle. What you lose is the roasted, faintly burnt bitterness that instant coffee brings, and that bitterness is precisely what deepens chocolate, so a brownie made with extract instead of instant coffee tastes coffee-scented rather than richer. Extract is also potent and concentrated; add half, taste, then add more.
6Chicory or roasted barley coffee granules
Different taste
Use the same amount by volume
A caffeine-free instant made from roasted chicory root, barley or rye, sold as a coffee alternative.
What changes
Best for
caffeine-free baking, chocolate cakes, spice rubs, children's desserts
Dissolves like instant coffee and adds no liquid, which makes it the only caffeine-free option that behaves correctly in a dry recipe. The flavour is where it parts company: chicory and roasted grain taste woody and molasses-sweet rather than roasty-bitter, so the effect on chocolate is gentler and the cake comes out slightly sweeter-tasting and less deep. Use a touch more than 1:1 if you want it to register at all.

What is Instant Coffee?

Instant Coffee is Instant coffee is brewed coffee that has been dried back into granules or powder, either freeze-dried into brittle crystals or spray-dried into fine dust, so it dissolves in hot water immediately and works in recipes as a concentrated dry coffee flavouring.

Cooking tips

The single teaspoon of instant coffee in a chocolate cake recipe is not there to make the cake taste of coffee. It sharpens and deepens the cocoa, in the same way a pinch of salt does. If you have none, the cake will still work; it will just taste a little less intensely chocolatey, which is a small loss and not a reason to abandon the recipe.
Dissolve instant coffee in a tablespoon of the recipe's hot liquid before it goes into a batter. Tipped in dry, the granules only partly dissolve and leave bitter brown freckles that taste unpleasantly concentrated when you bite one.
Freeze-dried granules, the brittle glassy crystals, taste noticeably less flat than spray-dried powder, and only freeze-dried whips reliably into a stable foam for dalgona or whipped coffee. If the tub pours like fine dust rather than rattling like crystals, expect a looser foam.
In buttercream, use the finest coffee you have and dissolve it in the smallest possible amount of hot liquid, ideally the vanilla or a teaspoon of hot water. Extra water is what breaks buttercream into a curdled mess, so a strong tiny amount beats a weak larger one.
Instant coffee pulls water out of the air and will set into a solid brick in a humid kitchen. Keep the lid properly closed, never dip a wet spoon into the jar, and if it has already gone hard, break it up and use it by weight rather than by spoonful since the density has changed.

Frequently asked questions

How much espresso powder equals instant coffee?

Use about half as much espresso powder as the recipe asks for in instant coffee, so half a teaspoon of espresso powder for one teaspoon of instant. Espresso powder is made from a darker roast, ground finer and dried to a stronger concentration, so a level spoon carries roughly twice the flavour. Going 1:1 is the usual mistake and it makes a chocolate bake taste of coffee instead of just tasting deeper.

Can I use brewed coffee instead of instant coffee?

Yes if the recipe has liquid you can take away. Use 1 tablespoon of strong brewed coffee per teaspoon of instant and remove 1 tablespoon of the recipe's milk or water. It will not work in a dry rub, a shortbread, a no-bake filling or anything else with no liquid to spare, and it becomes unworkable once the recipe calls for more than about a tablespoon of instant, because you would be adding a third of a cup of water.

Can I leave the instant coffee out of a chocolate recipe?

Yes, and this is the most common real-world answer. When a chocolate cake or brownie recipe calls for a teaspoon or two of instant coffee, it is a flavour enhancer, so omitting it leaves the structure and the bake time completely unchanged and simply makes the chocolate flavour a shade less deep. Add a pinch of extra salt in its place, which does some of the same work.

What can I use for dalgona or whipped coffee if I have no instant coffee?

This is the one recipe where instant coffee is genuinely irreplaceable, because the foam depends on the soluble dried coffee solids, and brewed coffee will not whip at all no matter how long you beat it. Espresso powder does whip but produces a looser, faster-collapsing foam, so add an extra teaspoon of sugar to stabilise it. Freeze-dried granules give the most reliable result of anything.

Can I use decaf instant coffee as a substitute?

Yes, 1:1, and it behaves identically in every recipe since the drying process is the same. Decaf instant tastes a little flatter and less aromatic than caffeinated, so if the coffee flavour is meant to be prominent, as in a coffee frosting or a tiramisu, use about a quarter more than the recipe says. In a chocolate cake where it is a background note, the difference is undetectable.

Related substitutes

More beverages substitutes

Instant Coffee substitute

Other instant coffee substitutes

2Strong brewed coffee or espresso

3Cold brew concentrate

4Finely ground coffee beans

5Coffee extract

6Chicory or roasted barley coffee granules