Chocolate Crinkle Cookies have a rich, fudgy center with a crisp powdered-sugar coating. They taste like hot chocolate in cookie form and disappear faster than I can plate them. These cookies are perfect any time of the year, but look especially festive served on a holiday cookie platter.
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Helpful Reader Review
“I tried these cookies 5 years ago, and they’re still one of my favorites! Thank you, Natasha, for such masterpiece recipes! I love your blog! 😍😘” – Dina ★★★★★
Easy Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
You know I love easy desserts with simple ingredients. This Chocolate Crinkle Cookies recipe is no exception, since there aren’t any fancy ingredients or techniques here. Mix, refrigerate, and scoop–done!
Chocolate Crinkle Cookies are like a cross between fudgy Brownies and Chocolate Chip Cookies that are rolled in powdered sugar to form “crinkles” as they expand in the oven. Crinkle cookies are perfect for gifting, since they get better the next day, and they are so good, you’ll want to make a double batch!
Did You Know?
Chocolate Crinkle Cookies first premiered in Betty Crocker’s famous cookie cookbook, “Cooky Carnival”. Crocker recounts being served the cookies by home chef Helen Fredell and begging her for the recipe.
Chocolate Crinkle Cookie Ingredients
Check your pantry and fridge for all you need to make my delicious chocolate crinkle cookies. Be sure to measure correctly so the cookies expand and rise correctly.
- Unsweetened Cocoa Powder – fluff the powder with a fork, then spoon it into the measuring cup to be sure you have the right amount of cocoa.
- Wet Ingredients – sugar, vegetable oil, eggs, and Vanilla Extract
- Dry ingredients – Flour, baking powder, and salt
- Confectioner’s sugar – for rolling the dough and creating crinkles. For a more festive look, try swapping with holiday sprinkles (Halloween-themed sprinkles look great, too!) or colored sugar.
How to Make Crinkle Cookies
Chocolate Crinkle Cookies are a blast to make because rolling the chocolatey dough and coating it in powdered sugar is good, messy fun, similar to making Russian Tea Cakes.
- Whisk the sugar, cocoa powder, oil, vanilla extract, and eggs together in a bowl.
- Whisk the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, and salt) in a separate mixing bowl. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and mix well.
- Cover the dough and refrigerate for 3 hours or up to overnight. This is essential for making a rollable and rising dough.
- Roll – Preheat the oven to 350°F. Shape cookie dough into balls (a cookie scoop makes it easy to portion) and roll in powdered sugar (wet hands make it easier to handle).
- Bake – Space the cookies on a lined baking sheet, and then bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove from the oven to cool on the sheet. Once cookies are slightly cooled, move them to a wire rack to fully cool down.
Pro Tip:
Chocolate crinkle cookies come out of the oven soft, but the outside hardens as they cool. In fact, they continue to get crispy as they sit, but the inside stays fudgey.
Chocolate Crinkle Cookies are just as important as Sugar Cookies and Gingerbread Cookies on your holiday cookie tray, so place them next to my Christmas Snowball Cookies and Homemade Baklava for a decadent, well-rounded dessert table!
Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil, (or canola, or light olive oil)
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
Instructions
- Whisk – In a mixing bowl, combine granulated sugar, cocoa powder, oil, vanilla extract, and eggs. Whisk until the mixture is smooth.
- Mix – In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the cocoa mixture and stir to combine.
- Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours and up to overnight.*
- Roll – Preheat the oven to 350°F. Scoop dough with a cookie scoop for even portioning into 20 cookies, then roll cookie dough into even-sized balls (it's easier to roll with wet hands) and generously roll each into powdered sugar.
- Bake – Place cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet, being sure to leave space between each of the cookies. Bake for 10-12 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies. Cookies will come out soft but will harden on the outside as they cool down. Cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to fully cool.
Notes
- Room Temperature: Keep your Chocolate Crinkle Cookies stored in an airtight container on the counter. They should stay fresh for up to a week.
- Freezing: Freeze your dough balls for up to 2 months in an airtight container. When you are ready to bake, remove them from the freezer and allow them to thaw overnight in the fridge before rolling them in powdered sugar, or bake from frozen, adding 1-2 minutes to the bake time.
Nutrition Per Serving
Filed Under
More Cookies Recipes You’ll Love
Cookie recipes, like my chocolate crinkle cookies, are so fun to make and share, so once you try this recipe, check out these other sweet treats:
- Peanut Butter Cookies
- Meringue Cookies
- Madeleine Cookies
- Macaroon Cookies
- Toffee Recipe
- Cranberry Cookies
- Snickerdoodles
- Palmiers Cookies
- Rugelach
- Biscotti
Hi! I’m Natasha Kravchuk, a New York Times bestselling cookbook author, recipe developer, food photographer, and writer. Here you’ll find delicious, reliable recipes made with simple ingredients, plus easy step-by-step photos and videos to help you cook confidently at home. 
This recipe was soooo good!!!! Definitely the best chocolate crinkle cookie recipe I have ever used!! I will for sure be making these again!! Thanks Natasha!!! 🙂
You’re so welcome, Shylah! I’m so happy you loved it!
These were great and really easy to make! I’ll definitely be making them again.
So glad you loved the recipe!
These are my go-to recipe for a chocolate craving because of how easy and good they are, but is there any way i could skip the 3 hour chill? Like putting them in the freezer for an hour or two instead?
Hi Michelle, I’m so glad you loved them. I recommend not skipping the 3 hour chill, it will alter the outcome of the recipe. I haven’t tried a quicker chill in the freezer to advise. If you experiment, let me know how you liked the recipe.
Yes you can and they come out fantastic I’ll put them in the freezer about an hour but check on them because if left in too long they won’t spread as easily while baking
Love these so much, I’ve made them for the holidays and have gifted them and they are always a big hit!
I’m so happy you love these, Kayla! That’s so great!
I recently tried the Chocolate Crinkle Cookies recipe, and let me tell you, it’s a game-changer! The texture is spot-on: crispy on the outside, soft, chewy, and oh-so-fudgy inside. It’s like sinking your teeth into a brownie, but in cookie form.
These Chocolate Crinkle Cookies are a must-bake. They’ll disappear faster than you can say “chocolate bliss”.
Thank you so much for a wonderful review John. I’m so glad you love the recipe.
Is the 1/2 cup of powdered sugar supposed to go in with the other ingredients or is supposed to be used to coat them in?
Hi Jodie! The powdered sugar is just used to coat them. I hope you love the recipe!
Thank you so much for the quick response! I have the dough chilling now.
The cookie was delicious but it spread too much. It was a very runny dough. It firmed up very well but as soon as I started to scoop it kinda blobbed out. I was able to roll them in powdered sugar but it was tricky. Not sure what I did wrong but again they were delicious.
Hi Jodie! I’m glad you loved the taste. See the common question section above for reasons why this can happen, specifically the question: “Why are my Chocolate Crinkle Cookies flat?”
I make these with cannabutter and it keeps the fiends coming 😁😂😂😂
These cookies were so easy to make. They look beautiful. My grown-up daughter said they reminded her of her childhood when I would make brownies. Delicious and easy to make cookies. Just factor in the chilling time of the dough if you make these! The dough has to be chilled for AT LEAST 3 HOURS.
Aww, that’s the best! Thank you so much for sharing that with me, Cindy! That is the best when kids love what we moms make, especially the grown-up kids. That’s so great!
Delicious and easy! I love a recipe that looks and tastes far more time-consuming than it actually is. And no butter to soften. A winner!
These cookies are delicious and so easy to make .. the kids love them!
They come out of the oven, seriously, picture perfect!
I used gluten free flour & doubled the recipe. I used my kitchen scale to measure out each cookie instead of a scoop. Each cookie was between .9 oz & 1.0 oz
I ended up with 42 cookies, broke them up into 4 bakes, 2 rounds of 12 cookies & 2 rounds of 9 cookies at 10 minutes for each round.
Cooled for 2 minutes on cookie sheet before transferring to wire rack. They came out perfectly crisp on the outside and soft and fudgy on the inside 10/10 would make again.
Love this recipe. So easy and they look impressive. Making some for a gift tomorrow.
Great idea! I hope she/he likes these cookies too!
I will make these for my school talent show but your other recipes are GREAT! So I have high hopes. Thanks for the amazing recipe btw
I hope you love this recipe Abdul!
Why the four stars if you like the recipes? 😂 Were they good when you baked the
Great recipe but curious how the total time is 25 minutes when the dough is chilled for 3 hours????
Be honest about the time involved.
Hi Michele, the 25 minutes references the total hands on work. I hope that helps.
Hello there… I want to make these cookies but was wondering if I can add walnuts and if so how much should I add? Thanks so much
Dina
Hi Dina, I haven’t tested that yet to advise
Just curious, but why the pepper grinder in the photo? Great cookies, by the way.
Hi F, that is a salt shaker in the photo, I hope that helps.
I used 1/2 brown sugar and 1/2 white sugar, so maybe that’s why my cookies weren’t that good. They didn’t spread at all by the 11 minute mark so I had to press them down slightly with my gloves, so they naturally came out a bit dense. I spooned and levelled my flour and also sifted it, and it was new flour, so I don’t know what happened.
Maybe I made my cookies a bit big? Each one was like 1.5 tbsp worth of dough and doubling the recipe yielded 30 cookies, each one the diameter of two small coins (after I pressed them down).
They also weren’t ‘fudgy’ and didn’t have that much of a chocolate taste. Of course, they’re not horrible, but I was really disappointed:( I’ve tried your chocolate cupcakes and they’re my favorite, but this was different.
Hi Amala, I would suggest making them exactly as written and to the size that is recommended in the post. Making them larger would change the bake time. I always recommend making the recipe exactly as written, because that is how I tested it, before attempting changes.
Hello! I’ve found that in chocolate recipes, using brown sugar makes the final product much fudgier and rich in chocolate flavor. If I were to use brown sugar for this, how much should I use?
Also, what’s the reason for using oil instead of butter?
I have to make these for my bakesale at school next week, so please let me know soon. Thanks so much!! <3
Hi Amal! I haven’t tested these substitutions. Oil helps with the moisture and it’s important for the cookies spreading and cracking. Reading through the comments, one of my readers reported good results using butter in place of oil, and another reported swapping out 1/2 of the sugar for brown sugar. Let us know how they turn out if you experiment.
I make this recipe just about once a week. My family absolutely loves them!!
That’s just awesome! Thank you for sharing your wonderful review, Brooke!
I loved these cookies, they were easy to make and turned out great! They are my new favorites!
That’s great, Abby! I’m so glad you love the recipe.
These are the best cookies I’ve ever had their like brownies in cookie form!
That’s a great way to describe these! So glad you loved the recipe.
I have used a Crinkles recipe since 1981 that I got from my Mom.. It’s been a good one, BUT, read yours a couple weeks ago and have made 2 batches in a week! They are so good..My son rates them a 12, better than my old recipe.. Thank you.
That’s wonderful, Jean. Thank you for sharing.