Coffee Cake Cookies

Coffee Cake Cookies are big, bakery-style cinnamon-spiced cookies with a brown sugar streusel and simple vanilla glaze. If you love coffee cake, you’re going to love these cookies!

Coffee Cake Cookies

Coffee cake is a favorite and frequently made treat in my home! We’ve shared our favorite creations here over the years: Blueberry Coffee Cake, Apple Coffee Cake, Pumpkin Coffee Cake — have you tried any of these recipes?!

And since it’s also no secret how much we love cookies, a mash-up of these two desserts was inevitable!

So Coffee Cake Cookies were born and they’re divine! These massive bakery-style cookies are loaded with rich, buttery flavor and notes of cinnamon. They’re packed with a sweet, crumbly streusel and finished with a simple vanilla glaze. Now you don’t have to choose between coffee cake and cookies — you can have both in one!

Bakery-Style Cookies

In my book, bakery-style cookies are massive– about 4 to 6 ounces in size (each!). They’re large, sweet, and totally indulgent, just like what you’d get at a bakery or cookie shop (like Crumbl®).

These cookies are designed to be large and the recipe doesn’t work the same when made into smaller-sized cookies.

If you’d prefer to have smaller cookies, I’d recommend these Snickerdoodle Cookies which have a similar taste profile.

Coffee Cake Cookies: Special Ingredients

There are two ingredients in particular that aren’t super common in cookie recipes. In this recipe, pay close attention to cake flour and vanilla bean paste. Depending on how often you bake, you may already have these ingredients in your pantry. But if not, you can readily find both ingredients in most grocery stores. While these cookies still work great without the vanilla bean paste, they are not the same without cake flour. For best results, we highly recommend waiting until you have cake flour to make this recipe.

Special Ingredient #1: Cake Flour

• The main special ingredient in these cookies is cake flour which isn’t a typical ingredient in cookies but is integral to the structure and flavor in this recipe.
• Cake flour has been milled to a fine consistency. It’s a low-protein flour, which essentially means less gluten is formed when mixing the cookie batter. Less gluten is going to produce a softer, gooier cookie texture. For reference, cake flour has about 7-9% protein while all-purpose flour clocks in at about 10-12%, and bread flour has an even higher protein content.

Special Ingredient #2: Vanilla Bean Paste

• Vanilla bean paste is used to get a rich, strong vanilla flavor, as well as little vanilla bean specks in the cookies.
• This ingredient is optional, the cookies will work fine without it, but they do have a slightly elevated flavor with it! (If you can’t access it, you can use vanilla extract.)

How To Make Coffee Cake Cookies

1. Prepare Dough: Melt butter, cool to room temperature, and whisk with brown sugar. Add egg and vanilla, mix. Stir in baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Gradually incorporate flours. Chill briefly.
2. Make Streusel: Melt additional butter, cool. Mix with flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon until clumpy.
3. Assemble Cookies: Form dough into five balls, press streusel onto top and sides. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
4. Bake: Preheat oven to 325°F (162°C). Place dough balls on lined sheet, bake 18-24 minutes until golden. Reshape if necessary, then cool.
5. Glaze: Combine powdered sugar, milk, vanilla, and salt. Drizzle over cooled cookies.
6. Serve: Store in an airtight container at room temperature. Enjoy your coffee cake cookies!

Coffee Cake Cookie Tools

• Silicone liner. We recommend baking these cookies on a silicone liner — they bake evenly and the bottoms won’t get too crispy when baking on a mat.
• Food scale. Using a food scale for cookie dough ensures even sizes, which helps them bake uniformly and look like perfect “bakery-style” cookies. Eyeballing portions can lead to uneven baking and less appealing presentation.

Coffee Cake Cookie Tips

• Don’t skimp on the chilling time. Chilling the dough makes the cookies tastier and helps them keep their shape when baked. It prevents them from spreading too much, ensuring they bake up thick and nice. The colder the dough, the better the cookies turn out!
• Only add streusel to the tops and sides of the cookies. The streusel will burn if added to where the cookie will contact the baking sheet. We press it in gently but firmly to the tops and a little on the sides.
• Measure the flour correctly.Pressing a measuring cup into a bag of flour packs in too much, making cookies cakey and less flavorful. Instead, spoon flour into the measuring cup until it overfills, then level it off with the back of a knife for accurate measurement. (Video visual here).

More bakery-style cookie recipes

• Crumbl Oreo Cookies with an Oreo frosting
• Bakery Style Chocolate Cookies with chocolate chips
• Gideon’s Bakehouse Cookie Recipe Copycat famous Orlando bakery copycat
• Bakery Style Chocolate Cookies reader favorite recipe!
• Heath Bar Cookies with whipped cream frosting and crushed toffee

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5 from 5 votes

Coffee Cake Cookies

By Chelsea Lords

Coffee Cake Cookies are big, bakery-style cinnamon-spiced cookies with a brown sugar streusel and simple vanilla glaze. If you love coffee cake, you're going to love these cookies!

Prep Time: 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 25 minutes minutes

Chilling Time: 1 hour hour

Total Time: 1 hour hour 55 minutes minutes

Servings: 5 large, bakery-style cookies

Ingredients 

USMetric

 

1x2x3x

Cookie

• ▢ 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• ▢ 1 cup light brown sugar, tightly packed
• ▢ 1 large egg
• ▢ 1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste (OR 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
• ▢ 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• ▢ 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• ▢ 3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
• ▢ 1 -1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ▢ 1-1/4 cup cake flour Note 1
• ▢ 1-1/4 cup white all-purpose flour Note 2

Streusel

• ▢ 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• ▢ 1/4 cup white all-purpose flour
• ▢ 3 tablespoons light brown sugar, tightly packed
• ▢ 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Glaze

• ▢ 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• ▢ 1 tablespoon whole milk
• ▢ 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ▢ Tiniest pinch of salt

Instructions 

• BUTTER AND SUGAR: Melt butter in a microwave-safe bowl in the microwave. Use a spatula to scrape every bit of melted butter into a large bowl and then set aside until it returns to room temperature. This is very important or the cookies will end up greasy (hot butter melts sugar). Once the butter is at room temperature, add in the brown sugar. With a hand whisk, briskly whisk until combined and smooth, about 1-2 minutes.
• EGG AND VANILLA: Add in the egg and vanilla bean paste (or vanilla). Mix until integrated.
• DRY INGREDIENTS: Add in baking soda, baking powder, fine sea salt (only add 1/4 teaspoon if using table salt), and ground cinnamon. Mix until combined. Measuring correctly (this is very important -- read note 1), measure both types of flour and add in. Mix to incorporate -- it will get tough, but keep mixing until flour is fully integrated. Cover tightly and place dough in the freezer just while making the streusel.
• STREUSEL: Melt the butter in the microwave and then let stand until it returns to room temperature. Once cooled, add remaining streusel ingredients. Mix until the streusel is evenly combined and forms small clumps; you may need to use your fingers to mix into crumbles. If streusel is too wet, add 1 extra tablespoon of flour.
• DOUGH BALLS: Divide dough evenly into 5 parts-- about 4.25 ounces or 130g per cookie (with a tiny bit leftover for a little snack for the baker ;)). Don't make smaller cookie dough balls -- this recipe doesn't work the same. Roll each portion of dough into equal-sized balls. Divide the streusel evenly into cookies, pressing into the top and sides, but not on the bottom (where it will burn).
• CHILL: Place streusel-topped cookie balls on a parchment-paper-lined sheet pan or plate and cover. Chill (in fridge) for at least 1 hour up to overnight. (Note 3)
• BAKE: Place 2 to 3 cookie dough balls at a time on a Silpat-lined baking sheet spaced far apart. Bake at 325 degrees F (162 degrees C) for 18-24 minutes or until ever-so-slightly golden at the edges and no longer gooey looking at the top. Err on the side of slightly under-baking to keep them soft and chewy; cookies will firm up to a nice and chewy cookie as they set (Note 4.) Remove from the oven and right out of the oven, press edges of the cookie inwards with the back of a metal spatula to get the perfect round bakery-style cookie. Let cool on cookie sheet for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack. Repeat baking with remaining cookies. Allow cookies to fully cool on a wire rack before adding the glaze.
• GLAZE: In a small bowl, use a whisk to mix all ingredients together until combined and smooth. Add a touch more milk if you'd like the glaze to be slightly thinner. Transfer to a small plastic bag and cut off the tip. Pipe glaze evenly over all of the cookies -- as much or as little as you'd like.
• STORAGE: We like these cookies best within 2-3 days of baking. They do last up to a week, but they begin to lose texture and flavor after 3-4 days. To store: Place in an airtight container and keep at room temperature. Wait until cookies are completely cooled before adding to the container. Rewarm in increments of 10-15 seconds in the microwave.
• FREEZING: Instead of freezing the baked cookies, freeze the dough! Drop the cookie dough balls on a large sheet pan and freeze until solid. Once solid, transfer the frozen cookie dough balls to an airtight container or bag and freeze for up to three months. To bake: You can bake these cookies straight from the freezer. There is no need to thaw, but you may need to add a few extra minutes to the baking time. Bake until the edges are lightly browned, and the center is still soft.

Video

Recipe Notes

Note 1: Cake flour: This flour is responsible for giving the cookies a fluffier, more delicate, and more tender crumb. It helps keep these cookies soft and chewy. We combine cake flour with all-purpose flour to get the perfect texture. Cake flour is usually found on the baking supplies aisle in the grocery store near other types of flour. Wait to make these cookies until you have cake flour-- I don't recommend any other flour, substitute, or homemade/DIY cake flour -- it doesn't work the same in this recipe.

Note 2: Measuring flour correctly: If you press a measuring cup into a bag of cake or regular flour and scoop, you will pack in way too much flour which affects the texture of these cookies (they will have less flavor and be too puffy!). To properly measure your flour, use a spoon to spoon the flour into the measuring cup until it’s overfilled. Then use the back of a table knife to level the measuring cup at the top. (Video visual here)

Note 3: Chill the dough: Don’t rush the chilling time or you’ll find yourself with cookies that spread too much.

Note 4: Ever-so-slightly under-bake: If cookies are over-baked, the taste and texture will be off. Slightly under-baking these cookies keeps them soft, chewy, and flavorful. Remember, the residual heat on the pan continues to bake the cookies for a couple of minutes even after they’re pulled out of the oven. Visual cues to look for: firm edges and set center (they shouldn't be overly gooey/wet looking).

Nutrition

Serving: 1serving | Calories: 592kcal | Carbohydrates: 89g | Protein: 5g | Fat: 25g | Saturated Fat: 15g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 7g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 100mg | Sodium: 536mg | Potassium: 131mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 65g | Vitamin A: 791IU | Vitamin C: 1mg | Calcium: 94mg | Iron: 2mg

Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

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