These delicious chocolate snickerdoodle cookies are flavoured with black treacle, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and a little black pepper. These chocolate spice cookies are like soft chocolate gingerbread!
These chocolate spice cookie are a chocolate-flavoured twist on the classic recipe for snickerdoodle cookies. The recipe and process are very similar to these chocolate sugar cookies, which everybody loves.
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Ingredients
- Flour—I used bleached all-purpose flour, but unbleached may also work.
- Cocoa powder—I bake with Cacao Barry extra brute cocoa powder. It's a Dutch-processed cocoa powder with a higher fat content than most grocery store brand cocoas.
- Leavening agents: you will need baking soda for this recipe. Please read about baking soda versus baking powder if you aren't sure the difference.
- Cream of tartar: I have tested this recipe with and without cream of tartar. It creates thicker cookies with a slight tang that is quite pleasant!
- Salt—I used Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt, but if you want to use table salt, use half the amount.
- Warm spices—I used ground cinnamon, ground ginger, ground black pepper, ground cloves.
- Butter—I used unsalted butter, but if you prefer to bake with salted, simply cut back on the salt in this recipe.
- Sugar— I used granulated sugar but brown sugar may work.
- Lyle's black treacle is a dark molasses-like syrup, popular in the UK.
- Eggs—use large eggs for this recipe. Let them come to room temperature so that you can easily incorporate them with the butter and sugar.
Please see the recipe card for the exact ingredients and quantities.
Substitutions and Variations
- Spices: I used cinnamon, ginger, and black pepper, but you can incorporate any of your favourite spices like nutmeg, cloves, allspice, or even cayenne to make these extra spicy.
- Molasses: I made these with Lyle's black treacle, but you can use baking molasses or Fancy molasses if that's what you've got! Molasses and treacle are both dark syrups made during the processing of cane sugar. I tested both and the results were pretty much identical.
- Cinnamon sugar: instead of rolling them in plain sugar, you can also roll the scoops of chocolate cookie dough in cinnamon sugar. For a more intense cinnamon flavour to the coating on these cookies, prepare a cinnamon sugar with 1:1 cinnamon to sugar.
- Baking powder, baking soda, and/or cream of tartar: you can make this recipe as written with baking soda and cream of tarter. Or, you can replace the two with baking powder (use 2 teaspoons or 10 mL of baking powder instead). You can actually skip the cream of tartar and just use baking soda if you don't like the acidity that cream of tartar brings to the flavour of these chocolate cookies. In fact, I originally tested the recipe with baking soda only and without cream of tartar. It worked great!
How to Make Chocolate Snickerdoodle Cookies
These chocolate spice cookies are so easy to make and you don't have to refrigerate or rest the dough before baking it! You can make the dough and bake it right away!
Step 1: Combine the butter, sugar, and molasses (black treacle) in the mixer bowl (image 1), then cream until well mixed before adding the egg and vanilla (image 2). Beat the mixture until it is light and fluffy and the egg has disappeared (image 3).
Step 2: Sift the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl (image 4) to ensure there are no lumps of spices, cocoa, or leavening agents, then add them to the mixer bowl (image 5). Stir in the dry ingredients until just incorporated (image 6).
Step 3: Use a ¾ ounce scoop to portion out the cookie dough into 30–35 gram scoops (image 7), then roll each scoop between the palms of your hand to smooth them out (image 8). Roll each scoop in cinnamon sugar to completely coat them (image 9).
Step 4: Place 8 cinnamon sugar-coated scoops of dough on a parchment paper-lined half sheet pan (image 10) then press them to flatten them to ½ inch with a flat-bottomed glass or measuring cup (image 11).
Step 5: You can sprinkle each cookie with a little more cinnamon sugar before baking (image 12). Bake until just set (image 13).
Snickerdoodle Baking Tips
For this recipe, I pressed the scoops of chocolate snickerdoodle cookie dough with a glass to flatten the mounds before baking. But you don't have to!
If you prefer a thicker, rounder cookie, this recipe will work and taste just as good whether you flatten the cookie dough scoops before baking or not. The appearance is different, but the taste and texture are very similar.
I also tested the combination of baking soda and cream of tartar in snickerdoodles compared to baking soda only or baking powder only. The resulting chocolate spice cookies looked very similar. The chocolate snickerdoodle made with baking powder was a little puffier and had a reddish hue inside. You could taste a slight tang in the snickerdoodle made with cream of tartar (not surprisingly).
Snickerdoodle Cookie FAQs
Snickerdoodles are actually a type of drop sugar cookie. The main difference is that scoops of snickerdoodle cookie dough are rolled in cinnamon sugar to coat them before baking, resulting in a slightly crunchy cinnamon sugar coating. On the other hand, sugar cookies are rolled in plain granulated sugar.
Cream of tartar is an acidic white powder that gives snickerdoodle cookies a tangy flavour. It also reacts with the baking soda to create a thicker cookie that spreads less than if made without.
If you are sure that you correctly measured all your ingredients, it's possible your snickerdoodles are flatter if your oven temperature is too low, causing the edges to spread out before they set. Get an oven thermometer to double-check! Consider raising the oven temperature by 25 °F to fix this issue if this happens to you. You can also try baking a test cookie without flattening it to see if you can achieve the texture and appearance you want with this small tweak.
If your snickerdoodles are crispy, it may be that you overbaked them. Use an oven thermometer to confirm the oven temperature is 350 °F (175 °C). Bake the cookies for only 10–12 minutes. If you are using a dark-coloured sheet pan, reduce the oven temperature to 325 °F (165 °C) to lower the heat on the bottom of the cookies.
Other Classic Drop Cookies
If you like this chocolate snickerdoodle cookie recipe, you will love these classic peanut butter cookies, as well as these soft and chewy oatmeal raisin cookies. And give these chocolate sugar cookies a try if you want another chocolate cookie recipe!
If you tried this recipe for chocolate spice cookies (or any other recipe on my website), please leave a ⭐ star rating and let me know how it went in the comments below. I love hearing from you!
📖 Recipe
Chocolate Snickerdoodle Cookies
Ingredients
- 218 grams bleached all-purpose flour
- 70 grams Cacao Barry extra brute cocoa powder
- 10 mL ground cinnamon
- 7.5 mL ground ginger
- 5 mL baking soda
- 5 mL cream of tartar
- 2.5 mL Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt
- 2.5 mL freshly ground black pepper
- 0.625 mL ground cloves
- 173 grams unsalted butter softened
- 150 grams granulated sugar
- 80 grams Lyle's black treacle or fancy molasses
- 2.5 mL pure vanilla extract
- 1 large egg(s) room temperature
- 50 grams cinnamon sugar
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (175 °C). Prepare a couple of baking sheets by lining them with parchment paper. Set aside for later.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, the granulated sugar, and the treacle or molasses for a couple of minutes. Scrape down the bowl as needed.
- Add the vanilla and egg. Beat the mixture until it is smooth.
- In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, black pepper, and cloves.
- With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture slowly. Continue mixing until the cookie dough has come together and you can no longer see any flour. Be sure to scrape up the bottom of the bowl because some flour could be hiding, unmixed, down there.
- Place the cinnamon sugar in a shallow bowl.
- Portion out and roll scoops of spiced chocolate cookie dough into balls and then coat them in cinnamon sugar.
- Place each sugar-coated scoop of dough on a cookie sheet, spacing them out every 1.5 inches. You should be able to fit 8 per half-sheet pan.
- Before baking, you can press the scoops of dough down to ½ inch (1.3 mm) thickness if you would like a flatter cookie or leave them round if you want a puffy cookie.
- Bake the cookies for 10–12 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes to firm up before transferring to a rack to cool completely.
Notes
- Use Dutch-processed cocoa powder, which has a darker colour and richer flavour. Natural cocoa powder is more acidic and may affect the texture and appearance of these cookies.
- I have tested this recipe with the following leavening agents and additives and all work well:
- 1 teaspoon (5 mL) baking soda + 1 teaspoon (5 mL) cream of tartar—flavour will have a slight tang
- 1 teaspoon (5 mL) baking soda only
- 2 teaspoon (10 mL) baking powder only—cookies puff slightly more and have a reddish hue inside
- If your chocolate cookie dough is too soft, you may chill it briefly for about 30 minutes. I have never needed to, but you may have to especially if your kitchen is warm.
- Use a ¾ ounce scoop to evenly portion out perfect scoops of dough (30–35 gram scoops). You can smooth them out by rolling them briefly between your palms.
- Do not overbake these cookies because they will dry out.
- These cookies are best eaten within 2–3 days because they may dry out and become more crispy.
- If using salted butter, you may reduce the added salt in the cookie dough.
- If using table salt instead of Diamond Crystal, you may add half the amount of table salt.
- If you are using a dark-coloured sheet pan, you may reduce the oven temperature to 325 °F (165 °C) to slightly reduce the heat on the bottom of the cookies.
Nutrition
This chocolate spice cookie recipe is adapted from a recipe for gingersnaps from Alice Waters, via David Lebovitz.
purabi naha says
Jan, wow, the addition of pepper is unique here! Very interesting recipe and the cookies look perfect!
Melissa@EyesBigger says
I have to try these - I think they'd be perfect for a cup of tea and I've been experimenting with pepper in cookies a little bit the last few months and I really like the little added kick they give - especially with ginger or molasses.