Gideon’s Copycat Coffee Cake Cookies

These giant coffee cake cookies are soft, thick, bakery-style cookies with super soft centers, layers of cinnamon streusel, and crunchy double baked butter crumbs on top… just like the Gideon’s version, but without the 6 hour line.

What is Gideon’s Bakehouse?

If you’re here, you’ve probably at least heard of Gideon’s, if not already been there. Or maybe you found your way here from one of my other Gideon’s copycat recipes, like the traditional Giant Chocolate Chip, the Cookies and Cream, or the Pistachio Toffee Chocolate Chip.

There’s a lot of hype floating around about this Orlando bakery, and honestly, the experience lives up to it. The bakehouse itself is teenie tiny with a spooky, but whimsical feel on the inside. It’s dark, with a Tim Burton-like vibe complete with framed photos covering every square inch of wall space. There’s a bakery case filled with giant cakes and their infamous half pound cookies. They also offer over the top cold brews like their popular peanut butter version.

It’s located in Disney Springs and ALWAYS has a line. A long one. On top of the line issue, most of us don’t live in the Orlando area and Gideon’s doesn’t ship. So how exactly are we supposed to go on with our lives without access to these amazingly indulgent cookies? Well, I put in hours and HOURS of recipe testing and cookie tasting (hard job I know) to bring you this Gideon’s Bakehouse Copycat of their SUPER popular Coffee Cake Cookie and I believe that it truly rivals theirs.

Ingredients

I wanted these cookies to be as close as possible to the Gideon’s version, so they are a little bit high maintenance- but definitely worth the effort. You’ll need to make the cookie dough, the double baked butter crumbs, and the cinnamon streusel. But, even though there’s three components, the ingredients are the same for all three so, there’s not a crazy long list of things you’ll need.

• High Quality Butter. This is a special cookie, and just like in my other Gideon’s copycat recipes I’m going to urge you to use Kerrygold Salted Butter. It’s just the best and will give these cookies the rich buttery flavor you’re looking for.
• All Purpose AND Cake Flour. I wanted these cookies to be super soft, and stay nice and thick. The addition of the cake flour will help the cookies stay nice and tall and pillowy soft in the center.
• Vanilla Bean Paste. Gideon’s website describes this cookie as having a vanilla bean base. Vanilla bean paste is stronger that regular vanilla extract and gives these cookies that extra punch of vanilla flavor. You can easily find vanilla bean paste in most grocery stores these days or on Amazon, but if you need to, go ahead and sub vanilla extract but use a little extra.
• Cinnamon. This is a riff on coffee cake, so you know there’s gonna be quite a bit of cinnamon throughout.

How to make bakery style coffee cake cookies

Make the double baked butter crumbs.

Gideon’s mentions “crunchy double baked butter crumbs” as the topping for these coffee cake cookies on their website. So I knew that I had to make the crumble, bake it, add it to the raw cookie dough, and bake again to achieve the same crunchy topping.

In a small mixing bowl, stir together the granulated sugar, brown sugar, and flour. Then pour in the melted butter and stir together until large clumps form. You want the mixture to be moist, no loose flour. If it’s too dry, add a bit more melted butter. It should feel like wet sand.

Pour it onto a parchment lined sheet pan and bake at 350 for 15 minutes. I like to use my Quarter Sheet Pan for this. Remove from the oven and let cool. Once it’s cool enough to handle, break up the really large pieces a bit, but leave some bigger and some smaller as pictured below to give the cookies nice texture.

Make the cookie dough.

In the bowl of your stand mixer, add the granulated sugar, brown sugar, and the cold, cubed butter. Note that we’re not using room temperature butter this time! This will help the cookies stay nice and tall when baked, and also allows us to skip the overnight chill. You’re welcome! Cream the butter and sugars for 5 minutes, or until the butter is fully incorporated and the mixture is light and fluffy. Be sure to take time to scrape down the bottom and sides of the mixing bowl as needed.

Add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla bean paste and mix for another 2 minutes. You want to allow the egg whites time to emulsify into the dough to create the structure that these giant cookies need. Next, add all of the remaining ingredients – all purpose flour, cake flour*, baking powder, baking soda, cornstarch, cinnamon, and salt – and mix until JUST combined, being careful not to over mix. The best way to prevent over mixing is to stop your mixer when a few streaks of flour remains and do a final mix with a rubber spatula.

Make the Cinnamon Streusel

The original version of these cookies at Gideon’s are layered. If you break one in half, you’ll see the vanilla bean cookie with ripples of what almost looks like cinnamon roll filling. Gideon’s calls it cinnamon streusel so I’m just following their lead – it’s a basic combination of flour, sugar, and cinnamon.

In a small mixing bowl, stir together the very soft (but not melted) butter, brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon until it’s well combined. That’s it! Easy!

Assemble the cookies.

Ok now bear with me. Like I said, the Gideon’s version of these cookies has DISTINCT layers of cinnamon streusel on the inside of these cookies and I knew I had to replicate that and we can’t do that by just stirring the streusel into the dough. So, what you’re going to do is scoop out 18 2 oz portions of the dough and then pop them in the fridge for about 10 minutes, or just long enough so that they’re firm enough to handle. *2 oz of dough is about 2 TBSP of dough. You can use either a standard 1 TBSP cookie scoop and scoop twice per portion, or this 2 TBSP scoop is perfect!

We’re going to make 6 giant cookies out of the 18 balls of dough, so we’ll use 3 balls of dough per cookie. Remove the slightly chilled dough from the fridge and flatten each one in your hand. Then, to assemble one cookie, grab one of the flattened dough balls, spread about 2 tsp of the cinnamon streusel on it, almost all the way to the edge. Then place another piece of flattened dough on top of that. Spread another 2 tsp of the streusel on that, and finally, top with a 3rd piece of flattened dough.

Use your hands to gently roll it into one large cookie dough ball. I like to create more of a tall shape rather than a perfect circle. This will help the cookies bake nice and tall and prevent too much spread. Repeat with the remaining dough so that you have 6 large balls of cookie dough. Then, cover the tops and sides of the cookie dough with the butter crumbs we prepared earlier. You should use most of the butter crumbs, but if there are leftovers save them to top cookies with after baking! Then, pop them in the freezer for 15 minutes while you preheat the oven to 350. *There are videos of me making these coffee cake cookies on my Tiktok and Instagram!

Bake the cookies.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and place two cookies on the cookie sheet with plenty of room between to allow for spreading. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Then, remove the cookies from the oven and use a spoon or small rubber spatula to scoot the edges back in a little and shape the cookies into more perfect circles. You have to do this while the cookies are still hot or the edges will set and won’t scoot.

Fill in any empty spaces with pieces of the leftover butter crumbs and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Let cool on the hot cookie sheet for at least 10 minutes so that the centers of the cookies finish baking and set enough to pick up without breaking.

Gideon’s Coffee Cake Cookies FAQs

• Can I make this recipe gluten free? Yes! Replace all of the all purpose flour in this recipe with a 1 to 1 Gluten Free flour like Bob’s Redmill or King Arthur Baking. For the cake flour, you’ll have to make your own which is easy to do. You just want to replace 2 TBSP of the 1 to 1 GF flour per cup with 2 TBSP of cornstarch. So – Grab your measuring cup, and put 2 TBSP cornstarch into the bottom of the cup. Then, spoon in the GF flour to the top and level it off with a butter knife. For the extra 1/4 C of cake flour, use 1/2 TBSP cornstarch, then spoon in the 1 to 1 flour and level off. If you’re weighing your ingredients (which I highly recommend!) you’ll use 315 TOTAL grams of 1 to 1 flour and 3 TBSP cornstarch.
• Can I skip the freezing before baking? Not really. If you don’t get the dough super cold before baking the cookies will spread too fast in the oven and won’t be thick and soft. If you want, you can prepare the cookies ahead of time and chill in the fridge overnight, but you can’t skip the chilling all together.
• Can I bake more than 2 at a time? For best results, I recommend baking 2 cookies per cookie sheet on the center rack of your oven because they’re HUGE and will spread a bit when they bake.
• Do I need a stand mixer for this recipe? You could also use an electric hand mixer for these cookies, but you wouldn’t be able to create this recipe by hand without an electric mixer. We start with cold cubed butter, so you wouldn’t be able to achieve the same results with a whisk.
• Can I make smaller coffee cake cookies? Yes! You can use 2 layers of dough per cookie with just one layer of cinnamon streusel in between to create 9 cookies. Follow the same steps but only do two layers per cookie. Bake at 350 for 11-12 minutes instead of 15.

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If you loved this recipe for Gideon’s Copycat Coffee Cake Cookies, be sure to leave a star rating and review below and tag @buuckfarmsbakery on Tiktok and Instagram. To save this recipe for later, click on the Pinterest icon on any of the images throughout this post.

Check out my other Gideon’s Copycat Recipes Here –

• Gideon’s Copycat Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Gideon’s Copycat Cookies and Cream Cookies
• Gideon’s Copycat Pistachio Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies