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.
Quick Tip
There are loads of tutorials and ways to make your own cake flour, but we did not find these DIY cake flours to have consistent results in these cookies. For best results, use store-bought cake flour which can be found near all-purpose and other types of flour in the grocery store.
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
- 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.
- Make Streusel: Melt additional butter, cool. Mix with flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon until clumpy.
- Assemble Cookies: Form dough into five balls, press streusel onto top and sides. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
- 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.
- Glaze: Combine powdered sugar, milk, vanilla, and salt. Drizzle over cooled cookies.
- 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).
Quick Tip
This Coffee Cake Cookie recipe has been tested many times. For the best results, follow the instructions exactly and use the ingredients listed. Baking can be tricky, so it’s best not to swap out any ingredients.
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
Coffee Cake Cookies
Ingredients
- 8 tablespoons unsalted butter melted
- 1 cup light brown sugar firmly 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 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1-1/4 cups cake flour see note 1
- 1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour see note 2
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter melted
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 3 tablespoons light brown sugar firmly packed
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon whole milk
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/16 teaspoon salt the tiniest pinch
Instructions
Cookie
- 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 set aside until it returns to room temperature. This is important or the cookies will end up greasy (hot butter melts sugar). Once butter is at room temperature, add the brown sugar. Briskly whisk until combined and smooth, about 1–2 minutes.
- Add in the egg and vanilla. Mix until integrated.
- 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. 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, 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 flour.
- Divide dough evenly into 5 parts—about 4.25 ounces or 130g per cookie (with a tiny bit leftover for the baker ;)). Don’t make smaller dough balls—this recipe won’t work the same. Divide the streusel evenly into cookies, pressing into the top and sides, but not on the bottom (where it will burn).
- 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 (see note 3).
- Place 2–3 cookie dough balls at a time on a silicone-lined sheet pan spaced far apart. Bake at 325°F (162°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 (see note 4). Remove from oven and right out of the oven, press edges of the cookie inward with the back of a metal spatula to get the perfect round bakery-style cookie. Let cool on cookie sheet 10 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack. Repeat 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 the cookies—as much or as little as you’d like.
Video
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
These cookies came perfect!! I was scared to make them because I thought they would be a mess! I am so happy to find your website! I will be making more of your recipes ♥️
I am so thrilled to hear this! Thanks so much Jackie! 🙂
Can this recipe be doubled?
I haven’t tried doubling it, but I don’t see why not! 🙂 Hope you love these cookies!