You Should Make Chocolate-Peppermint Crackle Cookies for Your Next Christmas Cookie Swap

I’ve made a few different versions of crackle cookies from boxed cake mix over the years, but baking Chocolate-Peppermint Crackle Cookies for the office cookie swap was my first go-round making them from scratch. I love crackle cookies because after baking, they have an impressive look that naturally forms as they fall in the oven, creating the crackled look, but they’re simple to make and always a crowd-pleaser.

One of the best reasons to make crackle cookies is that they require just about 10 minutes of hands-on time to mix all of the ingredients together and 10 minutes in the oven per batch. After making a few different versions of crackle cookies for different occasions, I’ve learned a few tips that will help to ensure that your crackle cookies come together easily.

First, there is one thing you should make sure to never do: Don’t use a whisk. And yes, I have to say that I learned this from experience. The batter is so thick that it’ll just get stuck between the wires and your bowl will be missing half of the dough that’s now trapped in your whisk. A spoon is your best option for stirring all of your ingredients together.

You’ll also want to make sure to allow at least an hour to refrigerate the dough before forming it into balls. Cooling the dough will help it keep its shape while you’re forming it and rolling it in the powdered sugar. The prepared dough will keep up to five days in the refrigerator so you can make it whenever is convenient for you and bake them when needed. Knowing I would be baking my cookies on a Sunday night after a busy weekend, I prepared the dough a few days in advance. Then i was able to pop the cookies in the oven on Sunday night and they were done in 10 minutes.

For this particular recipe, you could also easily swap the peppermint extract for vanilla if you prefer a fudgy taste instead of a strong minty taste. After my cookies were cooled, I topped them with crushed peppermints to make sure everyone at the cookie swap knew to expect a peppermint flavor since they have a very chocolatey appearance.

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The recipe makes about 15 cookies, so I easily doubled the recipe to make sure I had enough to go around. I opted for smaller cookies and was able to make about 40 with the doubled batch.