Get ready for your spooky celebration! These Dark Chocolate Halloween Cookies are a great addition to any party spread. They’re soft, chewy, filled with chocolate and decorated with festive candy.
We are quickly approaching the holidays! Before we know it we’ll be dressing up our kiddos for trick or treating, setting the table for Thanksgiving, and coming up with the best Elf on the Shelf ideas to wake up to in the mornings.
To me, Halloween is the official start of the holiday season. Once Halloween comes around the rest of the year is kind of a blur of candy, desserts, family and home decorations. You can see why this is my favorite time of year. Who doesn’t love desserts, family and a cozy home?!
Honestly, I kind of fell off the Halloween bandwagon for a few years because I never had anything to do to celebrate. Now that I have two nephews to watch dress up and go trick or treating with I’m slowly (quickly) rediscovering my love for all the spooky things coming up soon.
One of my favorite things, aside from my nephews, is making festive Halloween treats. Last year I made Spooky Halloween Bark and Pumpkin Mummy Rice Crispies.
This year it’s Dark Chocolate Halloween Cookies! The midnight colored dark chocolate adds to the spooky effect of these delicious cookies. Don’t let the color fool you. These cookies are as soft and chewy as can be! I used orange and white M&Ms to decorate but you can use any festive candies you want! Even dark chocolate chips would work here.
One of the reasons these halloween cookies are so soft and chewy is because of my secret ingredient I love to use in lots of cookie recipes: pudding. A pudding cookie is one of the softest cookies out there. And they stay soft for days!
Pudding cookies are not made with the actual pudding, they’re just made with the pudding mix you buy at the store. Just the powder! You can find it in the baking aisle next to the jello. Just be sure to grab the instant pudding mix. Once you have the pudding mix you’re ready to make your halloween cookies!
How To Make Halloween Cookies From Scratch:
A must-have for Halloween cookies is something festive that represents the holiday. A nod to a Halloween icon (i.e. witches or ghosts) or they should be decorated with black, white and orange!
These halloween cookies are going to be festively decorated with all three cookies. They get they’re “black” look from all the decadent chocolate. In this recipe we’re replacing some of the flour with dark chocolate cocoa powder. That combined with the chocolate pudding gives these their midnight look.
You’ll cream the butter and sugar together and add the eggs, pudding and dry ingredients as a next step just like a traditional cookie recipe. You’ll make sure everything is mixed up well before adding in the candies.
The other difference between these cookies and a traditional cookie is course the Halloween candies! I used orange and white M&Ms but you can use any festive candy you like.
You bake these halloween cookies just like a traditional chocolate chip cookie too! Mine took about 11 minutes to get the perfect consistency.
Because these halloween cookies are so similar to a regular chocolate chip cookie recipe I wanted to share some of my tried and true cookie make tips with you!
4 Tips for Making Perfect Cookies Every Time:
- Make sure to cream the butter with the brown sugar and granulated sugar for the allotted amount of time. When you cream the butter and sugar together the sugar cuts into the butter and creates air pockets. This is what makes the cookies bake tall and not spread everywhere. It also makes them so thick and chewy!
- Measure the flour and cocoa powder correctly. To measure it perfectly, spoon the flour into the measuring cup then scrape it off the top.
- Use parchment paper! A silicone baking mat works well too, but I swear by parchment. It creates even baking and the cookies stay thick and chewy the whole time.
- Use 1/4 cup of cookie dough for each cookie. Yes, that’s a lot of cookie dough! But it’s what makes them so perfect and thick. You’re going to feel like it’s a lot but don’t worry, it’s the perfect amount.
- Place additional M&Ms or Halloween candies on top when they come out of the oven. There’s a good amount of them in the batter, but adding a few more chocolate chips to the top of the cookie right when you pull them out of the oven makes them look perfect and festive.
Once they’re baked you can do 1 of 2 things: Take them to your party and eat them immediately or freeze them for later.
When I know I won’t have a lot of time, especially when it comes to holidays where things get really busy I like to make cookies in advance and keep them in the freezer so I’m ready. These cookies stay fresh in the freezer for up to 3 months! That means you could make them today (hint, hint) and they will be great for Halloween.
You can also freeze the dough if you want to! Same rules apply. Just freeze the dough and bake immediately (just bake 1 minute longer) and you’ll have fresh cookies.
Hope you love these festive dark chocolate halloween cookies as much as I do! Comment below and let us know how you’re celebrating and what you and/or your kiddos are being this year!
These cookies are delicious!! I love that you have a calculator to give you the ingredient amounts depending on how many batches! I put gummy googly eyes on mine as well. They are super cute!