These Coffee Cake Cookies are inspired by the Autumnal sensation Gilmore Girls. A deliciously spiced cookie dough topped with a buttery streusel and drizzled with a sweet icing glaze. Enjoy them with a cup of coffee at Lukes, or your front room will do too.
I first saw these cookies on Tiktok, shared by the ever wonderful The Palatable Life, while I was watching Gilmore Girls one morning. I knew it was fate, I simply had to make them. I had to make a few changes to the original recipe to anglophile it a little bit, American recipes often need a little tweeking as I find cup measurements to be so unreliable. I also added some extra spices to really amp up the Autumnal feel to these cookies, there’s not much that can’t be made better by extra helpings of ginger and nutmeg.
Why you’re going to love these cookies:
- These cookies are Autumn treats through and through. Spicer than a pumpkin spiced latte.
- They’re super easy to make.
- Buttery and delicious.
- Despite being called coffee cake cookies there isn’t any actual coffee in there, they’re just the perfect treat to enjoy with an afternoon cup of coffee.
Here’s what you’re going to need:
- Unsalted Butter – Make sure your butter is at room temperature before you start, this makes blending the sugar much easier.
- Sunflower Oil – Any flavourless oil will do here, vegetable or rapeseed are good substitutes.
- Light Brown Sugar – I prefer to use light brown sugar as it gives a subtle caramel flavour to the cookies. I don’t recommend using all caster sugar!
- Caster Sugar – A little bit of caster sugar helps with the structure of the cookies.
- Eggs – Always large, always free range!
- Vanilla Extract – Always use a pure vanilla extract, there’s nothing worse than vanilla essence. Yuck!
- Plain Flour – Sometimes called All Purpose flour.
- Baking Powder – Gives the cookies a good rise making them nice and thick.
- Ground Spices – Cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg for a delicious warming, Autumnal feel.
- Icing Sugar – Sometimes called powdered sugar
Tips for making Gilmore Girls Coffee Cake Cookies:
- Butter – Always start with room temperature butter. It’s much easier to cream with the sugar and will give a much better texture to the finished cookie.
- Chilling – You can get away with chilling these cookies for only 30 minutes before baking but chilling your cookie dough for up to 24 hours is optimum. This will help the flavour develop and give you much deeper tasting cookies. I always like to make my dough the day before I want to bake them. Just leave them on the counter for 30 minutes before baking if chilled overnight.
- Freezing – You can freeze the cookie dough, just make them up until you make the indent and place them in the freezer rather than the fridge. Once the cookies are frozen solid you can pop them in a freezer bag until needed. Freeze the streusel separately. Just add 2 minutes to the original baking time when baking from frozen. Top with the streusel before baking.
More Autumnal Cookie Recipes:
S’mores NYC Cookies // Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies // Taylor Swifts Chai Spiced Cookies // Chewy Pumpkin Spice Cookies // Snickerdoodle Cookies // Caramel Stuffed Pretzel Choc Chip Cookies
Gilmore Girls Coffee Cake Cookies
- Total Time: 34 minutes
- Yield: 12 cookies 1x
Ingredients
For the Cookies:
- 120g unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 80ml sunflower oil
- 170g light brown sugar
- 1 large, free range egg
- 1tsp vanilla extract
- 2tsp cinnamon
- 1tsp ground ginger
- 1/4tsp nutmeg
- 1tsp baking powder
- 350g plain flour
For the Streusel:
- 50g unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 40g light brown sugar
- 75g plain flour
- 1/2tsp cinnamon
- 1/2tsp ginger
- 1/4tsp nutmeg
For the icing drizzle:
- 100g icing sugar
- 1tsp water
Instructions
For the Cookies:
- Preheat the oven to 175C and line two baking sheets with parchment and set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or use a hand whisk) cream the butter, sugar and oil until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix until combined.
- Add the flour, baking powder and spices to the wet mixture and mix until just combined. Chill the dough for 1 hour while you make the streusel topping.
For the Streusel:
- Combine the butter, sugar, flour and spices together in a bowl and rub together with your fingers until you get a breadcrumb consistency. It should be crumbly but will stick together when you press it with your fingers. If you find your mix is a little too wet, add extra flour a tablespoon at a time until you get the right consistency.
- Remove the cookie dough from the fridge and scoop mounds of dough using a cookie scoop onto the prepared baking sheets. If you don’t have a cookie scoop portion out golf ball sized hunks of dough and roll into a ball. Leave 2″between each cookie to allow for spreading.
- Using a small spoon make an indent in the middle of each cookie and fill with streusel. Use more than you’d think as these cookies spread in the oven.
- Bake for 13-15 minutes until golden brown. Allow to cool on the tray for 5 minutes before transferring to a rack to cool completely.
To make the drizzle:
- Mix the icing sugar and water together in a small bowl until you get a good drizzling consistency. If the drizzle is too thin add a tough more icing sugar, if it’s too thick add a touch more water.
- Using a small spoon drizzle the icing over the cookies and leave to set.
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 14 minutes
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: Gilmore Girls, Coffee Cake, Cookies, Autumn, Fall
These cookies were super tasty. They were the perfect combination of flavor and texture. I used canola oil instead of sunflower oil and they came out great.
★★★★★
These coffee cake cookies are absolutely delicious and so easy to make. And the streusel was so good.
★★★★★