Gideon's Bakehouse Copycat Coffee Cake Cookies from Buuck Farms Bakery

Gideon's Bakehouse Copycat Coffee Cake Cookies - made dough October 17, 2023 from Buuck Farms Bakery

Double Baked Butter Crumbs

6 tablespoons butter, melted

3 tablespoons brown sugar

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

3/4 cup (95 grams) all-purpose flour 

Cookies

1 cup butter, cold and cubed

3/4 cup (165 grams) brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste or 1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups (165 grams) all-purpose flour

1 1/4 cups (165 gams) cake flour

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

Cinnamon Streusel

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/2 cup (110 grams) brown sugar

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

6 tablespoons butter, soft but not melted

1. Double Baked Butter Crumbs: preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a small mixing bowl, stir together brown sugar, granulated sugar, cinnamon and flour until well combined.
3. Pour in the melted butter and mix until crumbly. It should have the consistency of wet sand; add extra melted butter if too dry.
4. Pour mixture onto prepared sheet pan and spread into an even layer.
5. Bake for 15 minutes then cool. Break up any extra large pieces but leave a variety of shapes and sizes. Set aside.
6. Make the cookies: in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the brown sugar, granulated sugar and cold cubed butter for 5 minutes or until the mixture is light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl to keep mixture even textured.
7. Add egg, egg yolk and vanilla bean paste and mix for 2 minutes.
8. In a separate bowl, whisk together all-purpose flour, cake flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. 
9. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture in 2-3 additions, mixing on low speed until just combined. Do not overmix.
10. Portion dough into 18 2-ounce portions of dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Chill for 10 minutes.
11. Cinnamon streusel: combine all streusel ingredients and mix together.
12. Assemble cookies: take the chilled dough balls and flatten into rounds. You'll need 3 rounds for each cookie. Take one round and spread with about 2 teaspoons of the streusel mixture, almost to the edges of the round. Top with another round and spread another 2 teaspoons of streusel mixture. Top with a third round and roll into a tall ball. Repeat with remaining rounds to end up with 6 giant cookies.
13. Roll each cookie dough ball in the butter crumbs, coating sides and tops completely. Cover and freeze for 15 minutes.
14. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Place 2 cookies per sheet, spaced apart to allow for spread. Bake 15-20 minutes. 
15. Remove from oven and while the cookies are still hot, use a spoon or small rubber spatula to press the edges into place and create more of a perfect circle. Fill in any empty spaces with leftover butter crumbs and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Let cool on baking sheets for at least 10 minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.

This is a longer-than-usual post as this cookie has a longer-than-usual number of components and parts to it. I actually had to make it over several days as I didn't have time to spend on it all at once. 

First you make the butter crumbs mixture, bake it, let it cool then break it into pieces and crumbs. You'll need that for later.

Second, you make the cookie dough and weigh it out into 2-ounce portions which you roll into balls, chill then roll out into flat rounds. Or round-ish shapes. I faithfully weighed the dough into 2 ounce pieces but I only ended up with 14 2-ounce balls, not 18. I chilled the dough balls for a few minutes then sandwiched each ball between small pieces of parchment paper and rolled to flat shapes.

Third, you make the streusel while the small dough balls are chilling. My streusel wasn't a crumb mixture; it was more of a streusel paste. Which I spread over a flat piece of dough, covered with another piece, spread more streusel over it then topped with a third rolled-out piece of cookie dough.

Once the streusel is sandwiched between the three layers of cookie dough, pinch the edges to seal then ball up to make a smooth dough ball. You want to make sure the ball is sealed up well so none of the streusel paste leaks out during baking.

Depending on how soft or warm your dough ball is, you might want to chill it for a few minutes before covering with the butter crumbs. If your dough is too sticky, it'll be hard to handle. If it's too chilled though, it's harder to keep the butter crumbs stuck to it.

Do your best to cover all but the bottom of the dough ball with the butter crumbs. Your butter crumbs can/should be in various sizes and pieces, even with some small to large-ish crumbs.

The tricky thing with baking such large cookies, especially if you bake it from chilled or frozen dough (which I did) is the bottom will bake faster and brown almost well before the rest of the cookie which can lead to a harder bottom crust.

You can deal with this by double panning the baking pans to help the cookie bake more evenly. Or line a wire rack with a silpat and bake in a single baking sheet. Either way should work.

Final verdict? This was freaking delicious. Yes, a pain with more steps than your average cookie but this isn't an average cookie. The inside was moist and chewy, the streusel adds more moisture and cinnamon-brown sugar flavor while the butter crumbs add a nice crunch on top.

I've never had the real thing from Gideon's Bakehouse which is a specialty bake shop in Disney Springs in Florida and they don't ship online so it's unlikely I'll ever get a taste of the real thing. So I don't know how it compares to the original. But this copycat serves up a pretty good cookie.