If you’ve ever read one of my Friday Favorites posts, then you know I have an affinity for outrageous desserts.
Eight layer chocolate cake dripping with caramel, chewy chips ahoy and fruity pebbles? Chocolate chip cookie dough stuffed inside brownies, wrapped in pancakes and drizzled with hot fudge? Red velvet cake balls rolled in hot rocks and marshmallows, then grilled over an open flame?
I’ll have one of each.
While I enjoy drooling over and devouring these extreme edibles, I rarely make them at home. Mostly because I know they’d never stand a chance at a long and happy life with my raging sweet tooth lurking in the wings, but mostly because I’m lazy.
I mean, you know me! I adore cooking, hence this blog, but when a recipe starts taking more than 30 minutes of active cooking time, I tend to get a little fidgety. Then this happens.
I will make an exception for the Pioneer Woman’s Cinnamon Rolls though. Don’t get it twisted.
At any rate, the same rationale applies to me and Christmas Cookies. Would I like to take the time to make sugar cookie Santas and decorate them with royal icing, sparkly sugar and licorice ropes? Of course. Do I wish I had the patience to cut out and bake Linzer cookies with jam shining through the top like European stained glass? You bet.
Unfortunately I simply won’t, and don’t!
Maybe that’s why my favorite Christmas cookie in the world also happens to be one of the easiest. No waiting for butter to get to room temperature, no labor intensive decorating, and no icing. Ok, the dough does have to chill before they’re baked – but Chocolate Crinkle Cookies are totally worth it!
Each bite of this deeply chocolaty cookie treat is absolute Heaven. The outside is sweet and pure, while the inside is decadent and rich.
They just scream Christmas! to me. Maybe it’s because they look like a chocolate snowballs! 
Like I said, they’re totally easy to make too. Just cream together cocoa, vegetable oil and sugar, with eggs then vanilla.
Simple enough.
Next mix in flour, baking powder and salt.
Getting closer!
(Taste now, if you must. I must.)
I say the simple factor up until now overrides the fact that the dough now needs to chill in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours.
It’s not like it’s anymore work, you’ve just got to wait to get your reward!
Mmmkay, 4 hours later and we’re back. Roll 1 Tablespoon worth of dough into balls, then roll in powdered sugar. Bake for 8-10 minutes, and voila!
I adore these cookies, and they’re always such a crowd pleaser when I take them to get togethers!
Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
Makes 18 cookies
From AllRecipes.com
Ingredients:
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup powdered sugar
Directions:
- In the bowl of a mixer (or in a medium-sized bowl) beat together cocoa, sugar, vanilla and vegetable oil. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until mixture is smooth. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Mix into wet ingredients in 3 batches, mixing until just combined in between each batch. Cover the dough and chill for at least 4 hours, or overnight.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Scoop out 1 Tablespoon dough, roll it into a ball between your palms and roll in powdered sugar. Place on a non-stick sprayed, or parchment paper lined, baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes. Let cookies cool on the baking sheet for 2-3 minutes before removing to a cooling rack.
The insides of these cookies are dense like fudge, which I just can’t get enough of. MMMM!
Fa-la-la-la-lahhh-la-la-la-getinmymouth! 
Month of Holiday Giveaways
The lucky, soon to be even more on the move, winner of the Fitbit Ultra Giveaway is…
Amy: I have been doing at least 50+ push-ups everyday for the last 2 years-though maybe it’s time to up that to 100!
Congratulations Amy! Email your full name, address and ph# to IowaGirlEats@gmail.com, and we’ll get that out to you. To everyone else, keep on keepin’ on. Steps still count even if they’re not officially counted!
20 Day Holiday Workout Challenge
Uggghhhhh, it’s happened. I missed yesterday’s workout for the 20 Day Holiday Workout Challenge. Things were going so well, too! I’m vowing to make it up this weekend, and started over by hitting the gym for a great sweat sesh tonight, beginning with this 40 Minute Treadmill Routine:
| Time: | Speed: | Incline: |
| 0-5 | 4.0 | 4% |
| 5-10 | 6.5 | 0% |
| 10-15 | 7.0 | 0% |
| 15-35 | repeat minutes 5-15, 2 more times | 0% |
| 35-40 | 4.0 | 4% |
| Total: | 4.1 miles |
Followed by18 tortuous minutes on the stair stepper. I think we might be close to breaking up.
| Time | Steps per minute |
| 1-3 | 70 |
| 3-5 | 80 |
| 5-6 | 90 |
| 6-18 | repeat minutes 1-6, two more times |
Back on the bandwagon and feelin’ groovy!
Off to tackle a to-do list a mile long – goodnight! 
~~~~~
What’s your favorite Christmas or holiday cookie?
These are a fav of mine, too!! They look great!
Those look divine.
My favorite Christmas cookie would have to be pfeffernusse. I’ve never made them myself because my mom claims they’re a lot of work and I am not a fan of that. Oh and she always refrigerated the dough for days (sometimes over a week) and um…I can’t wait that long.
My grandmother had a recipe for pfeffernusse her mother brought over from Germany that was so old it was written in pounds… 2 cups is a pound the world around
They are a bit tedious to make but not that hard. Cutting up the Citron was the hardest part.
Chocolate crinkles make me swoooooonnnn!
I love love love peanut butter blossoms! Also, I love decorating sugar cookies with my sister. We don’t get that fancy though. My aunt makes those chocolate crinkle cookies every year. They are some of my favorites!
So check out these cookies! http://herviewfromhome.com/2011/12/13/her-tuesday-column-and-more-cookies/
I PROMISE you won’t mind these! Just don’t do more than…um, 12 or so. That’s about my limit!
So easy and how cute?!
Beautiful!!
Due mint instead and add chips.
(I bet they taste like the cookies from Panera)
YUM!!
Love these cookies. But my favorite Christmas cookie is the “O-so-Good” Cookies that my family makes every year. Like sugar cookies, but better. WAY better. The texture to these cookies is UH-mayzing. And we only have them at Christmas for some reason.
I made a similar variation of these!
http://theheartyherbivore.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/chocolate-cookies-more-like-brownies/
I love waffle iron cookies. They’re a chocolate cookie you make in – guess what! – the waffle iron! However, they are extremely time consuming, given you can only make four at a time!
Chocolate crinkle cookies are yummy too!
I have baked something very similar to these for years… I take the super easy way out though and have always used a cake mix
My favorite… lemon!
Love it – a favorite of mine as well! (Particularly the one’s Jenn mentioned from Panera – mint and chocolate – always a winning combo!)
My all time favorite Christmas Cookie has to be my Mom’s homemade Molasses Cookies (which are rolled out and frosted, not the typically Molasses Cookie that first comes to mind…. more like a gingerbread… but WAY better! They are 4-H State Fair certified Blue Ribbon)
the cookies are beautiful! i have always wondered how you get the crinkle look. so fun!
I love candies for Christmas rather than cookies — like homemade peanutbutter balls or chocolate covered cherries. However, if I had to choose a Christmas cookie I’d go w/ Spritz cookies. So cute and somehow you feel justified eating 5 because they’re so small.
Hmmmm, so many choices…I do LOVE the peanut butter balls my sister makes & the Oreo truffles from my sister-in-law (common denominator of CHOCOLATE!). However, I recently tried a new recipe for Tiramisu Drops. So cute & nummy. Just a little work, but worth it
Chocolate crinkles are my specialty. My mom is a great baker, but she requests that I make them instead. Mostly b/c she has a tendency to over bake them.
A tip if you want to try to decorate sugar cookies. Bake the cookies one day, and then decorate them a different day. You can even make them way in advance and freeze the unfrosted cookies. That helps break it up a little bit. And the cleanup is more controlled with two separate, but smaller messes
Another one of my faves is molasses…and spritz.
These look delicious! I usually suck at baking so I avoid it, but maybe I’ll give these a go since I just recently had some luck with some yummy chewy chocolate chip cookies (after trying again after one failed attempt, that is): http://midwestlagirl.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/i-baked-and-it-didnt-suck/
My favorite holiday cookies are plain ol sugar cookies with buttercream frosting and sprinkles! So festive and oh so delicious. I can eat like 20 in one sitting, and I have!!
Delicious! I hosted a cookie swap this past weekend and one of my friend’s brought these. Very good.
My all-time favorite is Betty Crocker’s Creme Wafers… just wouldn’t be Christmas without them. http://thelifeingreen.com/2011/12/12/cookie-swap-recap-my-favorite-xmas-cookie-recipe/
P.S. I totally fell off the 20 day workout…I banged up my fourth toe last week and have been slow going. Bummer.
MMmm, those little delicious!! I think I might make these for a party we’re having on Friday! My favorite cookie is those peanut butter kind with the reese’s in the middle. Lately though, I’ve been lazy and making a really easy peanut butter cookie that is so good and only has 4 ingredients! 1 cup peanut butter, 3/4 cup sugar, 1 tsp baking soda, and 1 egg. Bake 10 minutes at 375!
Raspberry thumbprints. They are so good.
In my opinion, this is the best cookie ever invented. My grandma used to make them for me as a special treat. Now that she’s not here anymore, I think it’s about time that I start making these at least once a year.
I am impressed that you were actually able to pick a favorite Christmas cookie! There are so many good ones out there. I think my favorites are Thumbprints with raspberry jam and buckeye balls.
I love that this recipe calls for ingredients that I always have on hand! Finally… no silly trip to the store for that one ingredient I will never use again. Can’t wait to test these out!
I love a soft gingerbread, my Grandma made the best ones ever but we never got her recipe… I have found many that have come close but not the same yet. I try a couple new recipes every year
my mom used to make what we called Angel Cookies in which you boil (yes, you read that right, ‘boil’) a completely gross-sounding concoction of eggs, sugar, chopped dates and rice krispies, and probably a bunch of other stuff too
and then roll into balls which are, in turn, rolled in coconut. While the process sounds icky, the result is really yummy! Also Scotch Shortbread which has a total of like 5 ingredients, with real butter being the chief one. 
These are great cookies. I love making them.
Love the way you’ve photographed them! Beautiful.
And such an easy recipe. Gotta try it! Happy holidays
My favorite holiday cookies are chewy molasses cookies. They are good alone or paired with milk, coffee, cocoa, or cider. Delicious!
How funny, I just made chocolate crinkles last night! I used this recipe: http://www.divine-baking.com/2011/04/deep-dark-chocolate-cookies.html#more but subbed mint dark chocolate for half of the chocolate. They came out really good but yours look fantastic as well! I’ll have to try those next.
My favorite too! Mom always made them for my birthday too (early January) because I loved them so much
yum! i am making those for sure! as for the stair stepper, yea, we officially broke up. BUT for a good reason. my mom did it 4 days a week FOR AN HOUR (yes shes a crazy workout woman! and she is 61!!! but anyways enough about that…) and her legs actually got quite a bit bigger…i dont know about you, but i am always on a quest to make these gams nice and thin so that was all i needed to dump the ol’ stair stepper in the gutter. havent looked back since!
I made peppermint chocolate crinkles this weekend from BakersRoyale that were WAY labor intensive (chopping 8 oz of baker’s chocolate, melting, stirring, etc) and they didn’t turn out half as lovely as yours. Will definitely try this recipe next time I’m craving crinkles!
They look delicious!
Did anyone else ask this? “Is it possible to leave the dough in the refrigerator overnight?”
Thanks!
You can chill the dough overnight in the refrigerator.
Chocolate Crinkles are my absolute favorite as well!
Gluten-Free holiday cut-outs and thumbprint cookies
These are my FAVORITE! My Mom makes them for me every year, I could eat an entire batch! I made some last year and they are really quick and easy, but they always taste better when my mom makes them
Yay! Someone else who doesn’t have the patience for decorated, cut out, iced and sprinkled holiday cookies! These look great!
My momma makes these [and molasses] cookies every Christmas- bring back so many great memories! But I always remember the wait time being the worst…
Must be an Iowa thing. Those are, also, my fave Christmas cookies. Mom only made them at Christmas growing up and the tradition continues! YUM!
YUM! These remind me of some that a local bakery makes. Off the chain. (er, I’m not really a rapper from 2000)
I currently cannot put down the Snickerdoodles. I even froze them so I won’t eat anymore. Turns out, I’ll still eat them frozen!
Date cookie–stuff a date with a nut, cover in a yummy dough,bake and frost with brown sugar frosting—YUMMMMM
Yep…that’s my favorite too. My grandmother used to make them and it was my job to do the cookie tray for dessert, and I wouldn’t put any chocolate krinkles on it because I didn’t want anyone else to eat them. Over the years she caught on, so she made a WHOLE batch just for me! Awesome, I can’t wait to make these with my mom this year. Oh, the memories.
I don’t have a sifter. Any suggestions? Will that make a difference?
You should be ok!
Mmm, I love chocolate crinkle cookies! I always add some peppermint extract to mine to make them extra-Christmasy! My all-time favorite cookie is peanut butter with peanut butter cups in the middle though – not really “holiday” oriented, but I always make them this time of year.
Oh my! These are my husbands favorite cookies BUT we didn’t know the name of them or the recipe! He just confirmed that these are the ONES! I cannot wait to make them so we can both enjoy them this Christmas!
My favorite Christmas cookie is a shortbread-like cookie that goes by several different names…
Russian Teacakes, Mexican Wedding Cakes, and what my mother called White Mice. Flour, sugar, butter/shortening and chopped walnuts baked and then rolled in powdered sugar. OMG!
I made followed this recipe and it made approximately one and a half dozen cookies. Did you double the recipe to get three dozen?
OMG Danielle – you’re right! I halved the Allrecipes.com recipe and made 18 cookies, but still put 3 dozen up there. SO sorry for the mixup!
I just found your blog and I love it! I am also from the great state of Iowa
I love how you mix two of my favorite things- cooking (and eating!) with your workouts- I’m looking forward to trying both!
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