Chocolate cookies rewards a little know-how: how to choose them, cook them, store them, and substitute in a pinch. Browse 10 recipes to cook with them.

What are chocolate cookies?

Chocolate cookies are the broad family of cocoa-based cookies, from crisp wafers and snaps to soft, chewy double-chocolate rounds. As a recipe ingredient they are less about being a snack and more about being a building block for other desserts.

Used whole or crushed, they bring deep cocoa flavor and ready-made structure. A cook reaches for a box of them to skip baking a base from scratch.

This page covers that ingredient role. For crumb crusts, see the chocolate cookie crumbs page; for the thin dark icebox cookie, see chocolate wafers.

Cooking With Chocolate Cookies

Whole cookies are a dessert in two clicks. Sandwich softened ice cream between two and freeze for Chocolate Malt Ice Cream Sandwiches, the simplest payoff a chocolate cookie offers.

Chopped, they fold into other sweets for texture. Stir coarse pieces into softening ice cream, scatter them across a tray of melting chocolate for a quick bark, or layer them through a Cookie Dessert or a Cookies & Cream Cheesecake where the cookie is the whole point.

They also work as edible craft supplies. Round cookies become the buns in Easy McHamburger Cookies and the bodies in Cookie Candy Turkeys, held together with a little frosting.

Crushed, they make a fast base too. A handful blitzed fine gives the dark layer in Easy Grasshopper Pie.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Chocolate cookies lean bitter-sweet, and they play best against cool, creamy, minty partners. Whipped cream, cream cheese, peppermint, and coffee all sharpen the cocoa, which is why grasshopper pies and mint desserts reach for them so often.

The usual mistake is letting them go soft when you want crunch. Whole cookies in a wet filling turn limp within hours, so add them late or seal a crushed base against moisture before the filling goes in.

The opposite problem hits icebox-style layers, where the softening is actually the goal. An underbaked, chewy cookie never firms up the way a crisp one softens into a sliceable cake, so a dry, snappy cookie is the right call there.

Match the cookie to the job. A crisp one suits crusts and ice cream sandwiches; a soft, fudgy one belongs chopped into a richer dessert, as in Moist & Minty Brownies.

Substitutes

For whole-cookie uses, almost any chocolate cookie swaps in. Pick by texture, not brand: a crisp snap stands in for a wafer, a chewy round for a soft cookie.

When a recipe wants a sandwich cookie, the creme-filled kind brings its own sweetness, so cut other sugar to compensate.

For crushed or crust uses, chocolate cookie crumbs or chocolate wafers do the same job with less effort, and graham crumbs work if you can live without the chocolate color and flavor.

No chocolate cookies at all? Add a spoonful of cocoa to plain vanilla cookie crumbs to fake the flavor, though the color stays paler.

Buying and Storing Chocolate Cookies

Find them in the cookie aisle in every form, from thin wafers and snaps to chunky bakery rounds and sandwich cookies. Buy by how you will use them, since a crust wants a dry cookie while a chopped mix-in can be soft.

Check the package for breakage. Shipping cracks the thin ones, and craft builds need them whole.

Sealed, most chocolate cookies keep for weeks to months in a cool, dry cupboard. Crisp ones go stale and chewy once air gets in, so reseal the sleeve or move them to an airtight tin.

Soft, bakery-style cookies are the exception and stale faster. Use those within a few days or freeze them, since frozen cookies thaw quickly and crush just as well straight from the freezer.

Quick facts

In Chinese

巧克力饼干

British (UK) term

Chocolate cookies

en français

biscuits au chocolat

en español

galletas de chocolate

Recipes using chocolate cookies

There are 10 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 10 recipes