These homemade chocolate crinkle cookies are rich, dark, fudgy, and impossible to resist! The recipe is perfect for any Christmas or holiday cookie tray.
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Cookies that taste like brownies
If you’ve never tried chocolate crinkle cookies, you are in for a treat.
These classic holiday cookies taste like fudge brownies in the shape of a cookie, with a delightfully soft texture and rich chocolate flavor.
Roll the unbaked cookie dough balls in powdered sugar, then bake in the oven and watch as a beautiful crinkled pattern magically appears.
This is the best chocolate crinkle cookie recipe you will find. Hot from the oven, they are equally fancy and delicious!
Also make these Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate crinkle cookie flavors
Peppermint: Add a fourth teaspoon of pure peppermint extract along with the vanilla extract. Top the finished cookies with crushed peppermint candies or candy canes.
Cinnamon Sugar: Instead of coating the crinkle cookies in powdered sugar, roll them in half a cup of sugar mixed with two tablespoons of ground cinnamon.
Red Velvet: For red velvet crinkle cookies, add half a teaspoon red food coloring with the liquid ingredients. Use only a fourth teaspoon for pink velvet. Or for a healthy alternative to food coloring, add freeze dried strawberry powder or swap out the milk with an equal amount of beet juice.
Mocha: Add half a teaspoon of instant coffee granules with the dry ingredients. Or substitute four tablespoons of brewed espresso for the milk.
Vanilla Bean: Omit the vanilla extract in the recipe below. Instead, add the seeds from one vanilla bean or a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste.
Double Chocolate Chip: Stir half a cup of mini chocolate chips (dark, semi sweet, white, or milk chocolate) in with the dry ingredients.
Chocolate Orange: Add the zest of one orange and a tablespoon of orange juice. Use a small egg or decrease the milk of choice to three tablespoons.
Caramel: After rolling the crinkle cookie dough into balls, press a caramel or a piece of chopped date into the center of each cookie.
Rainbow: Add a fourth teaspoon of pure almond extract to the liquid ingredients. After baking, roll each cookie in rainbow sprinkles.
Here is a lemon version: Lemon Pixie Cookies
Easy chocolate crinkle cookie ingredients
The recipe calls for flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda, salt, salted butter or a plant based alternative, milk of choice, optional egg, pure vanilla extract, and powdered sugar for coating.
Look for regular unsweetened cocoa powder, not Dutch cocoa. If possible, go for a high quality cocoa powder for the best tasting cookies.
Spelt flour, oat flour, and all purpose white flour are all great options. There is also a flourless keto crinkle cookie option included in the recipe box below.
I do not recommend substituting whole wheat flour, almond flour, or coconut flour.
The cookies can be sweetened with either traditional granulated sugar or unrefined coconut sugar for a healthy option.
The recipe has not been tested with pure maple syrup or honey swapped for sugar.
To make dairy free and vegan chocolate crinkle cookies, use a salted vegan butter and the option for extra milk of choice instead of eggs. Any plant based milk should work.
Unlike many other crinkle cookie recipes, this one requires no cake mix, and the results are so much better. Homemade is always better.
Holiday cookie recipe video
Above, watch the step by step crinkle cookie recipe video
Chocolate crinkles, also often called chocolate pixie cookies, are one of my all time favorite Christmas cookies.
The recipe below is adapted from my grandmother’s traditional recipe. I hope your family loves them as much as we do!
How to make chocolate crinkle cookies
Gather all of your cookie ingredients, as well as a baking sheet.
In a large mixing bowl or a stand mixer, combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, and sugar. Stir very well, making sure to break up any large clumps.
Add the liquid ingredients to the bowl or stand mixer. Use the beaters or a spoon to mix and form a cookie dough.
For baked cookies with the softest fluffy, chewy, and fudgy texture, it is recommended to cover the bowl tightly and freeze until chilled or refrigerate overnight. If you are in a hurry, you can technically skip this step.
Once cold, roll the dough into balls with a cookie scoop or clean hands.
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit, and add the powdered sugar to a bowl.
Cover the crinkle cookie dough balls generously in the powdered sugar, then place the balls on the cookie baking tray.
Bake on the oven’s center rack for twelve minutes.
The cookies should look underdone when you remove them from the oven. This is what you want, because they will firm up considerably as they cool.
Let them cool on the baking sheet for at least ten minutes before handling.
Storing chocolate crinkle cookies
Once firm, move the crinkle cookies to a cooling rack or serving tray.
Or eat them straight from the baking sheet!
Store leftovers in an airtight container for up to five days on the counter. Alternatively, freeze cookies in a covered container for about two or three months.
For soft chocolate crinkle cookies, store in a plastic container. For chewy cookies with more of a crispy texture, store leftovers in a glass container.
Baking tips and tricks for best results
When making the chocolate cookies for the first time, be sure to follow the ingredients and instructions without any substitutions or cutting back on any ingredients.
This way, you will know how the recipe is supposed to turn out. Then you can have fun experimenting to see how swapping out a different flour or sugar, or making other modifications, may change the results.
To achieve the classic crinkle look, it is important to roll the cookie dough balls in powdered sugar before baking, not after.
Do not open the oven even a crack while the cookies are baking. And allow cookies to cool on the tray before handling, because they firm up as they cool.
These festive holiday chocolate crinkle cookies need no refrigeration and are perfect for Christmas cookie exchanges or packaging up as gifts to friends and family.
They are also a delightful Thanksgiving or Valentine’s Day dessert.
Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup flour (For low carb, try these Keto Chocolate Cookies)
- 6 tbsp cocoa powder
- 1/2 cup sugar or coconut sugar
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup salted butter or vegan butter, melted
- 1 egg or 4 tbsp milk of choice
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup chocolate chips (optional)
- powdered sugar or sugar free alternative
InstructionsÂ
- *If preferred, the dough can be made in advance, rolled into balls, and frozen for any time you need a quick dessert.To make chocolate crinkle cookies, combine dry ingredients except powdered sugar in a mixing bowl or stand mixer. Stir in wet ingredients to form a dough. Cover and freeze the dough until chilled, or refrigerate overnight. Preheat the oven to 300 F. Roll the chilled dough into balls, then cover in powdered sugar. Place on a baking sheet and bake 12 minutes. The chocolate cookies should look underdone when you take them out of the oven. Allow to cool fully before handling. They firm up during this time. Store leftovers in a covered container for up to five days.View Nutrition Facts
Video
Notes
More Holiday Cookie Ideas
Do you have different options for oils, or just use to an extra virgin or a vegetable? I have severe tree nut allergies and therefore can not use coconut oil.
You generally have an alternative for the flours…
Thanks!!!
Sorry, for this recipe I have only tried coconut oil, so I don’t know if anything else will work.
Hey Katie 🙂 Those look amazing! Do you know that no-heat curling trick for nice curls over night? You just take a headband and wrap your slightly damp hair strand for strand around the band until it’s all around your head in the headband. Looks kind of like a greek goddess. Then you sleep like that and in the morning you have beautiful curls! 🙂 Seriously, look it up and try it out!
I finally made these and they are amazing! I can’t believe it took me so long. I didn’t have any coconut oil so I subbed smart balance light and it gave them a nice buttery flavor. I also used oat flour instead of spelt and I didn’t fold in any chocolate chips; they were quite chocolatey enough. 😀 The dough was even better than the baked cookies. I was thinking of trying them again with a peanut butter variation, peanut butter instead of coconut oil. Yumm.
Has anyone had success making these with GF flour? I tried the GF alternative recipe and, while lovely, it was a very different product. These are my favourite thing to eat in the universe, and
I miss them now my husband is on a gluten-free diet!
I made a batch over the weekend with GF flour because I felt the same way as you after making CCK’s GF alternative. The resulting cookie definitely had the melt-in-your-mouth effect that I love in hot chocolate cookies, but I could detect that aftertaste that I always seem to get when using GF flour. I used 1 c of Bob’s Red Mill GF all-purpose flour and added 1/4 tsp xantham gum. The two GF people I made them for (my niece and my sister) both loved the cookies, though, so maybe I’m the only one who got the aftertaste–or they’re used to it.
Can I substitute Amaranth or Arrowroot powder for the Spelt flour?
Yes, you can get a perm w/out fuzz. You ask them to use the giant perm rods. They will be the diameter of a quarter and give you loose curl on your ends if you let you end air dry or use a curing iron on them when dry. These will last much longer than non-permed hair. Feel free to ask more questions if you need help w/you hair. : )
Yum yum! Katie for president, you just made my monday night so much better!
I just had to officially thank you for this recipe. I’ve made these cookies several times now, but what beats all is that my son requested them specifically to bring to school to celebrate his birthday. This is the first year that we’re in a school where homemade treats are allowed, so I asked him what he wanted me to make, thinking that he’d say a certain flavor of cupcakes (since I’m known for my cakes and cupcakes). Nope; he wanted hot chocolate cookies for the class. I’m going to quadruple the recipe to make sure every student gets two cookies–it will certainly be a lot easier and faster to quadruple this recipe than bake and frost cupcakes for the whole class 🙂
In case anyone is very sensitive to the coconut flavor, you’ll be happy to know that the above recipe works well with canola oil instead of coconut oil (same amount). I didn’t intend to make the substitution, but I ran out of coconut oil for a 5th batch that I needed to make … and it was too late at night to head to the store. Texture and deep chocolate flavor is the same; just no coconut flavor with the chocolate.
These taste amazing! I just made them today and we are trying not to eat the whole batch. The only thing is the dough came out a little crumbly and so the cookies are a bit dry. Any ideas on what I can add to moisten them up a bit? Thanks!
You could use a little extra of the coconut oil.