Coffee Drink
Moroccan Spiced Coffee: Café Beldi & a Home Recipe
Moroccan spiced coffee, often called café beldi, brews coffee with an aromatic spice blend. Cinnamon and ginger appear in documented versions alongside other spices and sometimes sesame. This guide includes a simplified two-spice home recipe and explains how fuller blends differ.
Drink Snapshot
- Caffeine
- About 50 mg (reference)Generic brewed coffee at the defined serving massNot a measurement of this simmered recipe; beans, dose and extraction vary.
- Calories
- About 5 kcalPlain coffee plus a conservative spice allowanceNo milk or sweetener. The estimate counts all spice input, including some left behind.
Serving, sugar and sources
- Serving
- 125 g prepared cinnamon-ginger coffee; no milk or sugar
- Made with
- Ground coffee + water + cinnamon + ginger
- Sugar
- Less than 0.1 g total. Trace sugar from the spices; none added in the main recipe.
- Preparation
- About 8 minutes; heating time varies
USDA brewed coffee, ground cinnamon and ground ginger records. Estimates apply to this defined home version, not every café beldi blend. Sources checked 26 September 2026. See the full calculation or label comparison.
Key Takeaways
- 1The home recipe uses 20 g coffee, 300 ml brewing water and 0.5 g each of ground cinnamon and ginger. Measure 250 g prepared coffee, then divide into two servings.
- 2Each plain 125 g serving is about 5 kcal, less than 0.1 g sugar and 50 mg reference caffeine. Sugar, milk and different coffee strengths change those figures.
- 3Café beldi spice blends vary and may contain sesame. Moroccan describes the preparation here, not a guarantee that the coffee beans grew in Morocco.
On This Page8 Sections
Simple Moroccan Spiced Coffee Recipe
Makes two small servings in about 8 minutes. This is a deliberately simplified cinnamon-and-ginger version, not a claim that all Moroccan households use two spices. You need a saucepan rather than an espresso machine.
Ingredients
- 20 g finely ground coffee
- 300 ml water, plus hot water only if needed after decanting
- 0.5 g ground cinnamon
- 0.5 g ground ginger
Use a spoon, ml measure, heatproof jug, two cups and a scale accurate to 0.1 g for the spices. Weigh the ground spices separately; a heaped spoonful can overwhelm this small batch. These are dry ground spices, not fresh ginger pieces or whole cinnamon sticks.
Method
- Mix the coffee, cinnamon and ginger in a small saucepan. Add 300 ml water and stir.
- Heat gently until the first boil, then lower the heat and simmer gently for 1 minute. Stay beside the pan to prevent overflow.
- Remove from the heat and leave undisturbed for 1 minute so the grounds settle.
- Slowly decant into a heatproof jug, leaving sediment behind. Measure 250 g prepared coffee; if short, add only enough hot water to reach 250 g.
- Divide into two 125 g portions. Serve plain; leave any remaining sediment in the cups.
300 ml is the water going into the pan; 250 g is the coffee portion measured afterward. Evaporation and liquid retained by grounds affect what you collect. The conditional top-up standardizes these two servings; it does not promise that every pan produces the same extraction yield.
Chef Choumicha's café beldi recipe provides the reference for briefly simmering and settling a spiced coffee. Her fuller blend and coffee dose differ from this pantry adaptation. For another saucepan method and practical settling advice, the cowboy coffee guide covers handling brewed coffee and sediment; its recipe is a separate preparation.
Which Spices Are in Moroccan Coffee?
There is no single compulsory spice list. Cinnamon and ginger are useful starting points, but a fuller café beldi blend can include cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, anise and sesame.
The public recipes show real variation. Choumicha includes star anise and white pepper as well as other spices and seeds. Les Cafés Mirka's seven-spice Beldi blend lists cardamom, clove, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, anise and sesame. Neither list justifies declaring a different family's blend wrong.
This table scrolls horizontally on smaller screens.
| Starting point | What to do | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Plain coffee and two pantry spices | Follow the measured recipe above | Ground cinnamon and ginger are weighed separately |
| A ready-made café beldi coffee blend | Follow its brewing directions | Spices are already mixed with coffee; avoid adding the full extra dose |
| A spice-only blend | Use its suggested coffee dosage | It may contain no coffee at all, and the strength varies |
| A fuller homemade blend | Follow one complete recipe first | Sesame and other ingredients change flavor, allergens and nutrition |
Our version omits sesame and the additional spices to keep the ingredient list short. That makes it a simplified adaptation, not a substitute for the specific fuller recipes. Anyone avoiding sesame should check a purchased blend's actual label rather than infer its ingredients from the drink's name.
Does Moroccan Coffee Use Moroccan-Grown Beans?
Not necessarily. Mirka identifies Colombian beans in its Moroccan Beldi preparation. That is a useful distinction when shopping: the regional style describes how the coffee is prepared, while origin describes where its beans were grown. A bag can truthfully describe both.
Moroccan Spiced Coffee vs. Nous Nous
Spiced coffee emphasizes the aromatics brewed with the coffee. Nous nous centers on the coffee-and-milk combination; it does not require this spice blend. Adding milk to café beldi is an optional serving choice, not a reason to treat every Moroccan coffee name as interchangeable.
For another distinct regional preparation, Mofawar combines cardamom coffee with cream. Its dairy component and recipe belong to that guide, rather than being folded into this plain black-coffee estimate.
Adjust Spice, Strength and Sediment
Change one ingredient at a time. If the first cup is too spicy, adding more coffee is not the only adjustment: keep the coffee portion and halve the spice responsible next time.
| What you notice | A practical adjustment |
|---|---|
| Ginger dominates | Try 0.25 g ginger next time, keeping the other ingredients fixed |
| Cinnamon feels dusty | Check the weighed dose; let the pot settle and stop pouring before the sediment |
| Too much grit | Decant slowly; a paper filter can remove more fines, but changes texture and collected yield |
| Coffee tastes harsh | Avoid prolonged boiling or reheating on the stove; also check the roast and coffee dose |
| Too strong overall | Add hot water to your cup in small increments; that changes serving volume and concentration |
Sugar and milk are optional at the table. Taste the plain preparation before deciding how much to add. For a repeatable version, record the addition in grams instead of assuming that every spoon or splash is the same size.
Moroccan Coffee Caffeine, Calories and Sugar
For one 125 g plain serving, the working estimate is about 5 kcal, less than 0.1 g total sugar and 50 mg reference caffeine. The caffeine figure uses generic brewed coffee, not a laboratory analysis of the spiced stovetop recipe.
Serving calculation and source assumptions
USDA brewed coffee, NDB 14209, lists 1 kcal, 0 g sugar and 40 mg caffeine per 100 g. At the defined 250 g batch, that is 2.5 kcal and 100 mg reference caffeine before dividing into two.
USDA ground cinnamon, NDB 02010, lists 247 kcal and 2.17 g sugar per 100 g; ground ginger, NDB 02021, lists 335 kcal and 3.39 g sugar. Counting the entire 0.5 g of each gives 2.91 kcal and 0.0278 g sugar for the batch. Some spice remains with the sediment, so counting all of it is a conservative input allowance.
The combined calculation is 5.41 kcal and 0.0278 g sugar per batch, or 2.705 kcal and 0.0139 g sugar per serving. We present calories coarsely as about 5 kcal rather than imply that this untested brew has precise measured nutrition. Sugar is less than 0.1 g. The 50 mg caffeine reference depends on generic coffee composition; bean choice, grind, extraction and any top-up can change the real amount. No milk, sweetener or sesame is included.
Common Questions
Can I put the spiced blend in an espresso machine?
Can I make it with a ready-made café beldi blend?
Is Moroccan spiced coffee always sweet?
Can I make a decaf version?
Editor's Take
Sources and Further Reading
5 references
External links open in a new tab