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Cake Mix Fudge Crinkle Cookies

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Updated Sep 21, 2024
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Crinkle cookies are so named for their characteristic cracks that form during baking. The dough is rolled into balls and then rolled into a variety of sugar types. When baked, the cookies crack, revealing the fudgy centers. These cookies are visually attractive with their dusted powdered sugar tops and decadent to sink your teeth into with their moist, rich centers!

By starting with Super Moist™ devil’s food cake mix, you cut down on the number of ingredients you need to make these cookies as well as the time it takes to measure ingredients out. This means, you can get to the best part of cookie baking faster—the eating part! Loaded with chocolatey, fudgy flavor, these sweet treats are equally delicious as their scratch counterparts—but you spend less time making them and cleaning up.

Cake mix chocolate crinkle cookies are perfect to enjoy all year long. Whether you tuck them into a lunch box, bring them to a PTO meeting or add them to your holiday cookie platter, they are always a welcomed sweet treat no one can resist.

How to Make Cake Mix Crinkle Cookies

It’s no wonder everyone loves these easy crinkle cookies. They are a cinch to make, are bakery-beautiful to look at, and are moist and fudgy to devour. Here are the basic steps it takes to make crinkle cookies. Follow the recipe for all the specific directions, so your cookies will be picture-perfect and totally delicious:

Mix and Chill the Dough

Mix the dry cake mix, oil, eggs, and vanilla with a spoon. Cover and refrigerate the dough for an hour to make it less sticky and to help the cookies bake with their characteristic cracks.

Shape and Roll the Dough

Shape portions of the cake mix chocolate crinkles dough into balls. Use a spoon or small ice-cream scoop to make them all the same size, ensuring they will all be done at the same time when baked. Roll the dough balls in powdered sugar and place the balls on a cookie sheet. Don’t flatten the balls—the oven will take care of that. Since the dough contains raw eggs, which can harbor bacteria that can cause food borne illness, discard any remaining powdered sugar used for rolling the balls.

Bake and Cool the Cookies

Bake the cookies until the edges are set. Let them cool on the cookie sheet a minute to allow them to set up for easier removal from the sheet. Any longer than a minute may make them more difficult to remove. Cool them completely on a cooling rack.

Cake Mix Crinkle Cookie Variations

Chocolate Crinkle cookies are a favorite classic everyone loves. With a change or two to the basic dough, you can make entirely new cookies to surprise your family or friends with. Try any of these simple variations:

Swap the Sugar: Instead of rolling the cookie dough in powdered sugar, try granulated sugar, coarse white sparkling sugar, or even colored sugars.

Swap the Cake Mix: Use another flavor of Super Moist™ cake mix and change the flavor of your box cake crinkle cookies. We’re partial to lemon, carrot cake, or red velvet.

Color the Dough: If you’re using a white or yellow cake mix, you can color the dough for your favorite team for a game day party or for the holiday you’ll be serving them. Before refrigerating the dough in step 1, add a little food color gel or paste and mix the dough until it’s evenly colored.

You can also try any of these other scrumptious crinkle recipes that are top-rated by our fans:

Gluten-Free Chocolate Crinkles starring gluten-free Bisquick,™ will be welcomed by those that are sensitive to gluten without having to sacrifice any flavor or texture.

Molasses Spice Crinkles weave all your favorite fall spices into an intoxicating crinkle cookie recipe that’s perfect for the fall or winter.

Chocolate Mint Crinkles boast a double-hit of peppermint in the chocolatey cookies, with the addition of peppermint extract in the scratch cookie dough and minty, candy cane -striped candies on top.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it necessary to chill the dough?

For this easy crinkle cookies with cake mix, it’s important to chill the dough. Chilling your dough will help in two ways, helps to reduce the stickiness of the dough as well as lead to those beautiful cracks on the top of the cookies.

How to make cookies the same size

To get the yield of cookies the recipe states, and for the cookies to bake in the time given, you’ll want 1 1/4-inch size balls. You can use a rounded tablespoon of the dough to achieve this or easier yet, use a small, spring-loaded cookie scoop. Measure across the opening of the scoop to see that it’s 1 1/4-inches in diameter. A #50 scoop is the perfect size.

How to get pretty cracks on the tops of the cookies

It’s not hard at all to get the crinkle cookie cake mix recipe cookies to crack, as they do in the photo, with two simple tips. First, be sure to chill the dough before rolling it into balls. Then bake the cookies, one cookie sheet at a time, on the center rack of your oven.

For cookies to get the characteristic cracks, the surface of the dough needs a chance to dry out in the oven a little before the balls begin to flatten and spread. If you’re baking more than one sheet of cookies at a time, the extra moisture in the oven that’s baking out from the additional cookies can keep the cookies from drying properly before they spread.

Cake Mix Fudge Crinkle Cookies

  • Prep Time 20 min
  • Total 2 hr 15 min
  • Servings 29
  • Ingredients 5
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Ingredients

Instructions

  • Step 
    1
    Heat oven to 350°F (325°F for dark or nonstick cookie sheets). In large bowl, stir dry cake mix, oil, eggs and vanilla with spoon until dough forms. Cover and refrigerate 1 hour.
  • Step 
    2
    Shape dough into 1 1/4-inch balls; roll in powdered sugar. Place on ungreased cookie sheets about 2 inches apart. Discard any remaining powdered sugar.
  • Step 
    3
    Bake 9 to 11 minutes or until edges are set. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets to cooling rack. Cool completely, about 30 minutes. Store covered at room temperature.

Nutrition

90 Calories
3 1/2g Total Fat
1g Protein
13g Total Carbohydrate
7g Sugars

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size: 1 Cookie
Calories
90
Calories from Fat
30
Total Fat
3 1/2g
5%
Saturated Fat
1g
4%
Trans Fat
0g
Cholesterol
15mg
4%
Sodium
120mg
5%
Potassium
45mg
1%
Total Carbohydrate
13g
4%
Dietary Fiber
0g
0%
Sugars
7g
Protein
1g
% Daily Value*:
Vitamin A
0%
0%
Vitamin C
0%
0%
Calcium
2%
2%
Iron
4%
4%
Exchanges:
1/2 Starch; 0 Fruit; 1/2 Other Carbohydrate; 0 Skim Milk; 0 Low-Fat Milk; 0 Milk; 0 Vegetable; 0 Very Lean Meat; 0 Lean Meat; 0 High-Fat Meat; 1/2 Fat;
Carbohydrate Choice
1
*Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.

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