Chocolate Raspberry Crinkles Recipe

Just like chocolate crinkle cookies, but with the added flavor of real raspberries, these chocolate raspberry crinkles are soft-baked and chewy, deeply rich and fudgy, and coated in a raspberry-confectioners’ sugar topping that melts in your mouth. You need raspberry preserves and freeze-dried raspberries for these cookies.

Chocolate crinkle cookies are honestly one of my very favorite cookies to make around the holidays, and I love coming up with new ways to make them. A couple years ago I developed these flavorful lemon crinkle cookies; and last year, I fell in love with these Nutella crinkle cookies, which have the added texture of chopped hazelnuts and a soft Nutella filling. Yum!

For today’s crinkle cookie recipe, I wanted to give the original chocolate version a fruity twist. My entire team and I absolutely LOVE how these turned out. I think I might have a new favorite crinkle cookie recipe!

Recipe Snapshot

• Texture: Rich, soft, and very chewy… and they stay that way for days!
• Flavor: The always-amazing combination of dark chocolate and sweet-tart juicy raspberries that we love in a chocolate raspberry cake, but in a powdered sugar-coated cookie. Expect real raspberry flavor inside and out—no artificial raspberry flavoring here.
• Ease: These chocolate raspberry crinkles are a beginner baking recipe.
• Time: About 3 and 1/2 to 4 hours, but that includes the hands-off 3 hours of dough chilling time.

Ingredients You Need for Chocolate Raspberry Crinkles:

• Butter: Remember that room-temperature butter is not as warm as you think. Let it sit out for only 1 hour before starting. It will feel cool to the touch.
• Oil: To my regular crinkle cookies recipe, I added more flour, to make up for the addition of raspberry jam. Because of the addition of flour, they needed more fat. So, I added a touch of oil to keep the centers moist and fudge-like.
• Sugars: Brown sugar adds softness, and white sugar helps the cookies spread in the oven. I usually use a combination of the two in cookie recipes.
• Egg: To bind the ingredients together.
• Vanilla Extract: Yes, even the chocolatiest of cookies benefit from a flavor boost of vanilla! If you crave even more raspberry flavor, try replacing the vanilla with raspberry liqueur, such as Chambord.
• Flour: The base of the cookies.
• Cocoa Powder: Make sure you use natural cocoa powder here, not Dutch-processed. If you’re interested in learning why, read this post on Dutch-process vs. natural cocoa powder.
• Baking Soda: This leavener helps the cookies puff up when baking, then fall and crackle as they cool.
• Salt: The always-important flavor balancer. Regular table salt is all you need.
• Raspberry Preserves/Jam: I use the Bonne Maman brand of raspberry preserves, but you can use any raspberry preserves or jam that you can find. Preserves generally have larger chunks of fruit, while the fruit in jams is more finely mashed; but in the case of soft, delicate raspberries that break down easily, there probably isn’t a noticeable difference between preserves and jam.
• Confectioners’ Sugar: For rolling the cookie dough balls in before baking, to give them that snowy crinkle-topped exterior that gives crinkle cookies their name.
• Freeze-Dried Raspberries: Blitz into a fine powder, like we do for these raspberry sugar cookies, and mix with the confectioners’ sugar for coating the cookies. This gives these cookies real raspberry flavor inside and out!

The dough comes together easily with a stand or hand mixer.

Success Tips for Chocolate Raspberry Crinkle Cookies

Chill the dough. This is a must for this thick, sticky dough. Chilled cookie dough is not only easier to handle and roll into balls, it also bakes thicker cookies. 3 hours is the minimum, but it can also hang out in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, so you can start these cookies one day and finish them another.

Shaping the cookies: If the dough has chilled for longer than 3 hours, let it sit out at room temperature for 30 minutes to make it easier to scoop. Scoop the dough (about 1 and 1/2 Tablespoons/35g in size—a medium cookie scoop is just right for this) and roll it into a ball.

Raspberry-sugar coating: In a food processor or blender, grind the freeze-dried raspberries into a powder. Raspberries have teeny-tiny seeds, and you can either leave the seeds in if you don’t mind them, or sift the powder through a fine-mesh sieve, and discard the seeds.. Mix the raspberry powder with confectioners’ sugar in a small bowl, and roll each cookie dough ball generously in the coating.

Coating disappearing into the chocolate raspberry crinkle cookies? Try this: Try not to let excess confectioners’ sugar fall off as you place the cookies on the baking sheets. If the coating melts too much, you can use a sieve to sift a little more confectioners’ sugar on top once the cookies have cooled. It’s also helpful to bake these cookies on dry days. Any humidity in the air will soak into the confectioners’ sugar, slightly melting it. Sometimes you can’t avoid humidity, but if you’re wondering why the sugar melts more on one day than the last time you made these, it could be the weather. Again, go heavy on that roll in the raspberry powder-confectioners’ sugar coating. We want the coating to melt in our mouths, not in the oven!

If you have extra raspberry powder, sprinkle a little on top of the warm cookies as they’re cooling. Nature’s perfect pink sprinkles!