Coffee Cake Crumble Cookies
or CCCC's
This was not supposed to be the recipe for this week. In fact, these started as matcha crumble cake cookies, where chewy matcha-scented cookies were topped with a slightly-crisp-slightly-crumbly streusel topping. Then I brought them over to my trusty tastetester friends who said, “Damn, you’ve really been on a matcha kick lately. And you know what? They are right.
So in the spirit of trying to keep things fresh for you crowd, I thought about how I could pivot, eventually retrofitting the recipe to work with the OG crumble-topped cake: coffee cake. So if you were looking forward to the matcha cookies, you know who to blame. Don’t worry, I might post them one day.
In this recipe, soft, chewy cookies are swirled with a substantial cinnamon-brown-sugar swirl and topped with a super simple streusel. The sour cream in the cookie dough gives it the tang of a coffee cake and a tenderness that balances the final product right on the tight rope between chewy and cakey — not dense, not dry, but still a texture you can leave teeth marks in.
There are two keys to this recipe. The pictures above may seem like overkill re: the amount of streusel, but really to get a good coating you have to pack it on. I even found that pressing the dough balls down a bit to create a flat-ish surface helped the crumbles stick better. And don’t neglect the sides!
The second key is to swirl the cinnamon-brown sugar ripple way less than you think you need to. By simply moving your scoop or spoon through the dough, you will distribute it more than enough. Save a bit for before streusel-sprinkling so that if you find one or two dough balls that don’t have much swirl, you can go in and add a bit more to the top.
I swear, they smell and taste just like coffee cake — just in a richer, more portable format, making them perfect for breakfast, brunch and dessert.
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Makes 13 to 14 cookies
Ingredients
