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Made with a devil’s food cake mix, Chocolate Crinkle Cookies are soft, slightly chewy, and ideal for making with your kids this holiday season.
Alright, friends. We’re in the home stretch.
These little cake mix cookies are just the ticket when you need to make a last minute party dessert or gift. They whip up easily and taste so darn good!
I love how chewy these Chocolate Crinkle Cookies are, and you can customize them by adding flavors to the batter if you want. A little peppermint extract would be wonderful here (probably about 1/2 a teaspoon, if you decide to do it).
I’ve made these cookies for years, and we took them to several holiday parties this year. They’re a hit, whether it’s a school party, office potluck, or the proverbial ugly Christmas sweater party.
I love how these cookies look when fully baked. There’s some chemistry magic happening to make the powdered sugar with crackles and crinkles throughout look so pretty. You’re going to love them!
WHAT ARE CHOCOLATE CRINKLE COOKIES?
Have you ever had Chocolate Crinkle Cookies?
The dough for these chocolate cookies is rolled into balls, then coated in powdered sugar before baking. As they bake, the outside creates a crinkled appearance from the powdered sugar.
The best thing about Chocolate Crinkle Cookies, though, is how embarrassingly easy they are to make. That’s because they’re made with a cake mix!
If you like making Doctored Cake Mix, Pumpkin Crunch Cake or Caramel Apple Poke Cake, you’ll love this cake mix recipe as well!
HOW TO MAKE CHOCOLATE CRINKLE COOKIES FROM CAKE MIX
Because the base of this recipe is a devil’s food cake mix, you only need 5 ingredients to make these cookies:
- Devil’s food cake mix
- Eggs
- Vegetable oil
- Vanilla
- Powdered sugar (aka confectioners’ sugar)
Since they’re so simple to make, these are actually a great cookie for kids to make by themselves (aside from using the oven).
I use a mixer to mix together the dough – simply mix everything except the powdered sugar – but you could mix this dough by hand as well.
Once the dough is mixed, scoop balls of the dough and roll them in the powdered sugar before baking.
The cookies are done when the bottoms are set but the middles still appear slightly undercooked. It’s important not to overbake these cookies to keep that chewy texture!
CAN CHOCOLATE CRINKLE COOKIES BE FROZEN?
These Chocolate Crinkle Cookies are actually best fresh out of the oven, though they can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 days.
While you probably can freeze them, I would not necessarily recommend it, as I don’t think the texture would be quite the same after freezing.
CRINKLE COOKIE VARIATIONS
There are lots of ways you could change up your Chocolate Crinkle Cookies.
For example, try adding a little peppermint extract to make chocolate peppermint cookies, or a bit of coffee extract for a mocha flavor.
You could even add a little orange zest to this batter!
I have also made these cookies with different flavors of cake mix. For example, using a lemon cake mix results in a delicious, chewy lemon cookie.
The sky’s the limit with these crinkle cookies! However you choose to make them, you’ll love how quickly you can quell a cookie craving with this recipe.
Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 boz Devil’s Food Cake Mix 15.25 ounces
- 2 large eggs
- ⅓ cup vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- ⅓ cup confectioners' sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, set aside.
- In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, combine cake mix, eggs, oil, and vanilla extract until well blended. Place confectioners’ sugar into a medium bowl.
- Using a medium cookie scoop (1 ½ tablespoons), drop balls of dough (dough will be sticky) into the confectioners’ sugar, roll to coat. Gently form dough into a ball by lightly rolling between your palms.
- Place dough balls on prepared baking pan about two inches apart.
- Bake in preheated oven for 7 to 9 minutes. The bottoms will be set but middles will look slightly undercooked. Allow cookies to cool for 5 minutes on pan before removing to a wire rack.
Notes
- These cookies are best served fresh out of the oven; however, they will keep in an airtight container for 2 days.
- Doctor up these cookies even more by playing with different extracts and add ins. I think a little orange zest would be a great addition, or try adding in a little mint extract for easy Chocolate Peppermint Crinkles.
- This base recipe does work well with other box flavor varieties, I have tried it with lemon cake mix which resulted in delicious, chewy lemon cookies.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Great recipe! I love having quick and easy recipes like this on hand!
What a brilliant idea to use cake mix. They look really delicious and quite professional.
Good idea to use cake mix! Never heard of using cake mix for these before!
I am happy. Just got home from the grocery store with 6 various boxes of cake mix and came to the computer to find the wonderful Jamie’s blog post. Yay for buy one/ get one sales!!! See ya, can’t waste precious baking time writing about how much I love this blog and all that stuff ;)
These look delicious! It’s always nice to have a quick and easy recipe on hand for times when you’re in a baking mood, but feeling lazy.
I’ve never made these using a cake mix before! What a great way to shorten your time in the kitchen when you’re not really feeling it. I know I wouldn’t pass these up!
I’ve made similar lemon ones. Only instead of the oil, using 1c Cool Whip (which I guess is just oil though isn’t it?) and 1 egg.
I make a similar recipe for chocolate crinkles and when I made my choc chip cookie dough stuffed ones I used it too, minus the sugar. I don’t add vanilla and I use milk. Believe it or not my recipe is actually a “light” recipe! either way you spin it…GREAT brownie like cookies.
Boy do these look great! Jamie your the best and always seem to have recipes to cater my cravings! Keep it up!
I really your recipes that you come up with. I actually am going to make one of them and that was the easy strawberry cupcakes with strawberry buttercream. I can’t wait to see how they turn out tomorrow!! I am also probably going to make the chocolate crinkle cookies. I am super excited to make the cupcakes! Thank you for all the recipes because they are delicious!!
Thanks so much for stopping by, Mally! I appreciate you taking the time to comment. Happy Baking!
-Jamie
Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a box mix every now and again. Especially when it leads to something as delicious as these cookies! I am *totally* picking up a lemon cake mix the next time I’m at the store.
The only cake mix I’ve seen that doesn’t translate well into “cake mix cookies” is red velvet. Never seems to work… BUT cherry chip is yummy. My fav is definitely the lemon though.