These Cookies Taste Just Like Coffee Cake and Autumn in Stars Hollow

"Gilmore Girls" debuted 23 years ago (October 5, 2000, to be exact) and was popular enough to run for seven seasons. Yet, it may be more popular now than it was during its run as original fans and new fans watch it repeatedly on Netflix. As I made the cookies I’m about to tell you about, I rewatched an episode where the family patriarch, Richard Gilmore, declares, “I am an autumn” as a response to a beauty magazine color quiz he took at the suggestion of his granddaughter, Rory.

The cookies have little to do with that particular scene except for this: "Gilmore Girls," particularly the first season, now seems to be directly linked with fall in its fans’ minds. The first several episodes of the show take place in autumn, and the set is completely decked out with pumpkins, hay stalks, and colored leaves. The show is also directly linked to food. So much food.

Binging TV and Making Coffee Cake Cookies

When fall starts, many fans (re)binge the show and social media timelines fill with Gilmore Girls-inspired content, especially food posts. This year, one particular recipe keeps showing up—Gilmore Girls Coffee Cake Cookies, created by recipe developer Mallory Jones Oniki. Her followers are going nuts for the cookies.

“I can’t stop thinking about these. Just finished my last one!” one of her followers gushed. And another was even more enthusiastic, “RUN don't walk to make these. Seriously. These are THE. BEST. cookies I have ever made. THANK YOU!”

As a fan of coffee cake, cookies, and "Gilmore Girls," I decided to bake them up.

Can Cookies Taste Like Coffee Cake?

In the episode I watched while making the cookies, the town’s diner owner, Luke, makes Rory a coffee cake for her birthday breakfast. That short scene is enough to make coffee cake a "GG" food, but Oniki switches it up and turns the cake usually served with coffee into cookies.

And guess what? They really do taste like coffee cake. In fact, right out of the oven, warm, with the icing drizzled on them, my son told me they tasted like the bakery-made coffee cake he gets from a food cart outside his work.

They’re cakey, but moist and full of brown sugar and spicy cinnamon. The streusel topping and simple powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk icing complete the sweet coffee cake vibe that’s a great accompaniment to coffee, tea, or a tall glass of cold milk.

Oniki’s recipe has three steps. Make the simple cinnamon and brown sugar cookie dough, make a streusel topping with more brown sugar and cinnamon, and bake the dozen large cookies. As they cool, drizzle on the icing. The recipe worked really well, with the exception of the baking time.

As one of the commenters said, “THIS WAS SO GOOD OMG I baked for longer though.” I had to bake for longer than the 10-12 minutes the recipe calls for, too, about 2 minutes longer.

You don’t need to be a "Gilmore Girls" fan to want to bake these viral cookies. But if you love fall, and you love coffee cake, and you love your house smelling like warm cinnamon, these cookies are for you.