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Tessa’s Recipe Rundown
Taste: Mild chocolate flavor to let those mix-ins really shine.
Texture: The cookie is ultra soft and chewy with blissful crunches from the Halloween M&Ms and googly candy eyes.
Ease: SO easy to make.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe: It’s the perfect quick yet impressive Halloween dessert.
Festive and easy, these Halloween Cookies are an absolute must-make for your friends and family for a spooky movie night at home or for the Halloween block party!
No tricks here, just a delicious and adorably festive treat!
They’re so easy to make, too. No crazy decorating with royal icing required! Plus, these are so fun to get the kids involved with baking up a spooky treat together.
If you make these for your Halloween party, you might want to make a double batch. They go fast! 😉
I’m obsessed with these cookies. I make them all the time for friends and they’re always a hit. So creative and can be switched up for Christmas or Easter.
These are one of my favorite Halloween treats to make each year, and I hope you love this recipe as much as I do (and the guests who have enjoyed them off my dessert table too!).
Key Ingredient Notes
This recipe is very straight-forward, but there are a few special ingredients doing some heavy lifting. Here’s what you should know:
Black Cocoa or Dutch-Process Cocoa Powder – Black cocoa can be ordered online and will provide that festive deep dark color. It also makes the cookies taste like Oreos! If you can’t find it, use Dutch-process cocoa powder instead. Be sure to also measure your cocoa correctly, as cocoa powder is a drying ingredient and too much will dry out your cookies.
Cornstarch – To keep the consistency of these cookies soft and tender.
Butter – Be sure it’s at a cool room temperature (around 67°F is perfect), and not too warm or greasy. Learn why butter temperature is important in baking here.
White chocolate chips & Halloween-themed M&Ms – For flavor, and to bring a super fun Halloween-y flair to our cookies! I used the “Ghoul Mix” M&Ms originally in this recipe, which appear to have been discontinued in recent years (boo!). Use the regular Halloween M&Ms instead.
Candy googly eyes – Optional, but so festive! Easy to find under the Wilton brand at most grocery stores seasonally, or online.
How to Make Double Chocolate Halloween Cookies:
- Cream the butter and sugars. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugars together on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
- Add the vanilla and egg. Scrape the bowl down before adding in the vanilla extract and the room temperature egg, beating well to combine.
- Combine the dry ingredients. Sift together the flour, cocoa, cornstarch, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Gradually add in the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and beat until a slightly sticky dough forms.
- Add the chocolate. Fold in the white chocolate chips and M&Ms with a rubber spatula.
- Portion out the cookies and decorate. Using a large spring-loaded scoop, drop 3-tablespoon sized balls of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing them at least 2 inches apart. Dot the balls of cookie dough with extra chips and M&Ms.
- Bake. At 350°F for about 12 minutes, until puffy but still soft, being careful not to overbake.
Carefully press candy eyeballs into the cookies while still hot. Allow to cool slightly on the baking tray before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.
Can I Change up the Mix-Ins?
Yes! You can absolutely switch out the white chocolate chips and Halloween-themed M&Ms for just about whatever you like! Just be sure to keep the total weight (or volume) the same as written in the recipe as well as using similarly sized mix-ins so the cookie dough balls stay together. Here are some Halloween cookie mix-in ideas:
- Dark chocolate chips
- Semi-sweet chocolate chips
- Reese’s Pieces
- Well-chopped candy bars
You can also add candy corn to the tops of the cookies after baking, along with the candy eyeballs.
Storage & Make ahead
Room Temperature: These are best enjoyed when fresh, but they will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days. Be sure they are completely cooled before storing.
- How to Keep Cookies Soft: Add an apple wedge, piece of bread, or a tortilla (my favorite) to the container a day or two after baking them, or whenever you find the texture beginning to harden. The moisture from this will migrate to your cookies, making them soft and chewy again.
Freeze Cookie Dough: I love the taste of cookies straight from the oven best (who doesn’t!?). I always keep pre-scooped balls of various types of cookie dough in a resealable bag in my freezer, so I can bake cookies off and have them warm from the oven in a matter of minutes whenever I want! Find all my tips for freezing cookie dough, and baking from frozen here.
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Ingredients
- 1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, at cool room temperature
- 1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup (50 grams) brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 egg, at room temperature
- 1 cup (127 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup (43 grams)
black cocoa powder (or Dutch-process), sifted - 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 cup (85 grams) white chocolate chips, plus more for garnish
- 1 cup (218 grams) Halloween M&MS, plus more for garnish*
Edible candy eyeballs , for garnish
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugars together on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape the bowl down before adding in the vanilla extract and egg, beating well to combine.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, cornstarch, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Gradually add in the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and beat until a slightly sticky dough forms. Fold in the white chocolate chips and M&Ms with a rubber spatula.
- Using a large spring-loaded cookie scoop, drop 3-tablespoon sized balls of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing them at least 2 inches apart. Dot the balls of cookie dough with extra chips, M&Ms.
- Bake for about 12 minutes, until puffy but still soft, being careful not to overbake. Carefully press the candy eyeballs into the cookies while still hot from the oven. Allow to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
Photos by Joanie Simon.
Quick and easy to make! We made these for a play date and they were a big hit with everyone. I used Reese pieces instead of m&ms because peanut butter and chocolate are so good together.
So fun and festive!
Where are we finding black cocoa powder?
Hi Terri! Some specialty kitchen stores may carry it, but most of us have purchased it online. As Tessa mentions in the pink tip box (above the recipe), it’s available on Amazon here. Happy baking 🙂
These cookies are amazing! They look so festive and all my friends loved them. I love how the dark cocoa powder balances with the sweet white chocolate and m&ms 🙂
We did these as bar cookies and they were wonderful. Had such a fun time with the grandkids making these. Next time I will definitely do cookies, so they can use more “eyeballs”. This cookie is a favorite chocolate cookie.
For my personal tastes, I would have preferred less salt and a little more sugar in the dough. I triple-checked the recipe, measured well (and put a bit less salt) and still found the dough to be almost bitter/savory (in other words, for me the balance wasn’t quite right). I get that that may be to offset the sweet candy, and I don’t like my cookies “too sweet,” this was just even less sweet than I prefer. The overall effect was good so I’ll probably make them again and just add a little more sugar.
Amazing! I did not think there would be something to rival brownies. I was thinking, how could these come close to that? Pretty good. I have made these twice with slightly different variations and were both great.
The first time I made it with bittersweet chocolate chunks, reeses M&Ms because I couldn’t find any Halloween M&Ms and candied eyeballs.
The 2nd time for this raffle, I actually used brown butter and did find Ghouls mix M&Ms, then used that with white chocolate chips and reg choc chips. I skipped the Eyeballs because I thought they didn’t help the flavor and were a bit hard.
Totally recommend trying out this recipe 🙂 and try it with browned butter too 🙂
This recipe was so much fun and honestly so simple! I’m a total double chocolate lover so these cookies were so so tasty, not to mention super festive and adorable!
Super easy and a cute Halloween treat:)
we’ve made these 3 times this last week. we did reduce the m&ms the 2nd time. so much better when you have less. but these are the best cookies. ever.
These are so cute and fun to make! I love the black cocoa powder!
What a fun Halloween cookie.
I used black cocoa powder & the cookies have an oreo taste. I think I’m going to try regular cocoa powder too.The recipe is really easy to follow & the cookies turned out great with no refrigeration needed.
Thank you for sharing your recipe with us & Happy Halloween.