Living in NYC the past few years, I’m not used to random acts of kindness from my neighbors. Hell, I never even knew WHO my neighbors were. It’s a total culture shock living in Long Island, now. So when I found out that my neighbor snow plowed our driveway without even telling us, I was overjoyed! To thank him, I made a plate of cookies. I’ve wanted to try a recipe from Cookies and Cups, a new blog I started following a few months back. I wanted something relatively simple since I didn’t have time to go shopping before the storm and wasn’t planning on baking. So I went with the coffee cake cookies, which looked like the perfect comfort food.
I call these “snowed in” cookies, because I had just enough ingredients to make them (literally). I had just enough brown sugar and not a drop more. As for cinnamon, I actually ran out of ground cinnamon and had to grind up a cinnamon stick using my Magic Bullet food processor. It actually worked really well, and the cinnamon smelled sooo fresh. I highly recommend it if you are making something with a lot of cinnamon, like cinnamon buns.
I made my cookies the size of golf balls, and used a cookie scoop to make an indent in the cookie to fill with the crumb mixture.
I put a lot in the indentation and then packed some more on top. I actually had quite a bit of crumble topping leftover, and now hubby is eating it over his ice cream. So if you have leftover topping, save it!
***Note, the original recipe calls for 10 TBSP butter and 1/3 cup shortening. Since I didn’t have shortening on hand, I used 2 sticks of butter and chilled the dough for 1 hour before baking to ensure the dough was stiff enough. I don’t know if the butter substitution affected the baking time, but I had to bake my cookies for 15 minutes before they were golden, compared to the 9-10 minutes in the original recipe. Just thought I would mention that in case you decide to go with shortening.
- For the crumble topping:
- 1/2 cup softened butter
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 1/3 cup white sugar
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 2/3 cup flour
- For the cookies:
- 2 sticks of butter
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 1/3 cup flour
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
- Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper
- Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. You can use a potato masher to get the mixture started. I found that mixing with my hands worked best, though. Refrigerate while you make the dough.
- Mix the butter and both sugars for 1-2 minutes on medium speed until smooth.
- Add the eggs, vanilla, and cinnamon and continue to mix.
- Turn the mixer to low and mix in the baking powder, salt, and flour until the dough comes together.
- Chill the dough for an hour to prevent the cookies from spreading.
- Lightly roll the dough into golf ball sized balls and place on the cookie sheet about an inch apart
- Use a cookie scoop or spoon to make a deep indentation in the center of each cookie. Fill with a generous amount of crumble topping and press down.
- Bake the cookies for about 15 minutes, until the edges are golden.
If you had a snowy day today, hope it was filled with yummy baked goods!
