Chocolate cookie dough

With enough chocolate cookie dough in this recipe to keep half in the freezer, you can always have some chocolate cookie dough ready to bake into chocolate cookies.

This is a chocolate cookie dough recipe perfect for rolling out cut out biscuits which are to be iced with royal icing. The chocolate cookie dough keeps its shape beautifully in the oven and doesn’t spread out on baking.

Depending on the theme and colour scheme of your cookies, chocolate cookie dough can have much greater visual impact than paler vanilla cookie dough.  It looks especially striking with a white icing border against the dark brown chocolate cookies.

I made three types of cookie dough in my book but I have to say chocolate is my favourite.

Storing chocolate cookie dough

The quantity in this chocolate cookie dough recipe is deliberately generous. Divide the batch into two halves and keep some chocolate cookie dough in the fridge or freezer.

I nearly always have a couple of frozen discs ready to make some decorated cookies. Rolling out the dough and baking some cookies is something my son Ted loves to help me do.  For inspiration have a look at my previous decorated cookies posts.

You can keep the chocolate cookie dough in the fridge for up to a week or in the freezer for 3 months.

Tips using chocolate cookie dough

If your chocolate cookie dough has been in the fridge for longer than half an hour it may go a little hard. Leave at room temperature a while to soften it up again.

Likewise, if you are removing chocolate cookie dough from the freezer allow several hours before you plan to roll it out and bake.

If you skip the chilling time you may find your chocolate cookie dough is too sticky and spreads in the oven.

One tip I have discovered since taking this photo is that you can use cocoa powder to dust the surfaces when rolling out chocolate cookie dough. This stops you getting white floury marks on your dark brown chocolate cookie dough meaning the cookies look much better after baking.

Take care not to roll your chocolate cookie dough too thin as it will burn quickly. The biscuits taste better if baked thicker too although you will yield fewer cookies per batch.

As well as baking cookies, you can use chunks of this chocolate cookie dough in ice cream.

Which other desserts can you imagine using chocolate cookie dough in?

Print Recipe

Chocolate cookie dough for chocolate cookies

The perfect chocolate cookie dough for making chocolate cookies for icing.

Prep Time50 minutes mins

Cook Time10 minutes mins

Total Time1 hour hr

Author: Sarah Trivuncic

Ingredients

• 175 g 6oz soft unsalted butter
• 200 g 7oz caster sugar
• 2 large eggs US extra large, beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 450 g 1lb 1.5oz plain (all purpose) flour
• 50 g cocoa powder

Instructions

• Cream the butter and sugar together until pale. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. In another bowl combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture and mix gently. Be wary of adding too much flour at this stage as you will add a dusting of flour or cocoa when you roll the biscuits out and you don't want it to be too dry.
• Halve the dough and form fat discs. Wrap with cling film and refrigerate for at least one hour. The dough freezes very well if you want to save half for another occasion.
• Whilst the dough is in the fridge, preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
• Sprinkle your work surface with flour, place a disc of dough on it, and sprinkle a little more flour on top. Roll out to a thickness of about 5mm. Cut out your shapes and space well apart on the baking sheets.
• Bake for 8-12 minutes, by which time the cookies will be lightly golden around the edges. Cool on a rack and continue with the rest of the dough. Small biscuits will cook quicker so use this time as a guide.

Notes

This recipe makes enough cookie dough for you to split it into two batches and save one half for freezing.