Chocolate Snowball Cookies
Chocolate snowball cookies are a delectable holiday classic that never goes out of style. These bite-sized delights are perfect for any winter gathering, with their rich chocolate flavor and melt-in-your-mouth texture.
🔍 Recipe At-A-Glance: Chocolate Snowball Cookies
- 🕰️ Prep Time: 10 minutes
- ⏰ Cook Time: 10 minutes (plus 15 minutes cooling time)
- 🍫 Flavor Profile: Buttery, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate morsels.
- 🍪 Good For: Christmas cookie plates, chilly winter evenings with a cup of chai tea, sharing with neighbors and your mail delivery person to spread some holiday cheer!
- 🧡 Difficulty: Easy peasy. You'll struggle most with letting the cookies cool so you can roll them in powdered sugar!
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🧡 Why You'll Love This Recipe
Hi friend: Get ready to fall head-over-heels for these Chocolate Snowball Cookies. They're the kind of cookie you'll proudly bring to the cookie swap (and maybe sneak a few before they even make it off the cooling rack). These sweet cocoa snowballs are a joyful, slightly messy way to celebrate the season.
Here's why you'll love this recipe:
- Double coated: Unlike most snowball cookie recipes, this recipe calls for you to roll your cookie balls in powdered sugar...twice. I've found that the double roll gives the most consistent sugar coating for an extra "snowy" finish.
- A great gift: Package these cookies in a pretty tin or jar and tie them up with a bow for a crowd-pleasing homemade food gift for Christmas. A jar of these cookies + a jar of soup mix in a jar is the perfect savory-sweet, complete dinner gift!
🍫 The Ingredients You Need
- Butter: The butter is the foundation of these cookies, providing that delightful buttery flavor and contributing to their melt-in-your-mouth texture.
- Powdered sugar: Sweetens the cookies and gives them their characteristic crumbly texture. The finished cookies get rolled in powdered sugar, making them look like snowballs!
- Mini chocolate chips: Many traditional recipes call for chopped nuts for crunch. Instead, this recipe uses a whole cup of mini chocolate chips for crunch and extra chocolate flavor.
- Cocoa powder: I've tested this recipe all kinds of ways, and the batches made with cocoa powder were the undisputed winners!
Make sure to check the recipe card below for the full ingredients list, along with quantities and my expert tips and tricks.
🔁 Variations & Substitutions
- Regular chocolate chips: Regular-size chocolate chips will not work for this recipe because they are too big to roll into such small, round cookies. If standard chocolate chips are all you have, chop them with a sharp knife or pulse them in a food processor before adding them to the cookie dough.
- Go gluten-free: We've made these chocolate snowball cookies with a gluten-free flour blend in place of the all-purpose flour, and they were just as delicious as the gluten-containing ones! If you need more gluten-free cookies, check out these gluten-free sugar cookies or buckeye balls!
- Spiced chocolate cookies: Add some cinnamon and a pinch of chili powder for a delightfully spiced chocolate cookie variation.
- Chocolate pecan snowball cookies: Replace up to half of the mini chocolate chips with chopped pecans for a chocolate pecan variation.
🥣 Chocolate Snowball Cookies How-To
Step 1: Break out your mixer and get ready to party. Cream with butter with ½ cup of the powdered sugar. It will look clumpy at first, but will eventually even out to a light yellow, fluffy, smooth mixture.
Step 2: Add the cocoa powder and vanilla to give the cookies their rich, chocolatey goodness.
Step 3: If you tried to bake the cookies now, you'd end up with something closer to frosting than cookies. Add the flour, chocolate chips, and salt to fix that.
Step 4: Roll the cookie dough into tablespoon-sized balls and set them on a parchment-lined baking sheet. They shouldn't spread much, but you'll still want to give them some elbow room-about 1" spacing should be fine. Bake for 10-12 minutes. It can be hard to tell when chocolate cookies are done because of the darker color, so watch for the gloss and shine to disappear from the tops.
Step 5: Move the cookies to a wire rack and let them cool for 15 minutes before rolling them in powdered sugar. If you roll them immediately, the sugar will melt right off!
Step 6: When the cookies have cooled entirely, its time for the "snowy" magic trick: a second roll through the powdered sugar. It's the finishing touch that takes these cookies from "great" to "wow!"
🙋🏻♀️ Chocolate Snowball Cookies FAQs
If your cookie balls are falling apart before they make it to the oven, your cookie dough may just be a little too dry. Try adding a splash or two (just a little bit!) of milk to see if that does the trick.
Store these chocolate ball cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a week.
Sure can! Roll the dough into cookie-sized balls and freeze them in a single layer on a baking sheet. Move the frozen dough balls to a zip-top freezer bag or a freezer-safe container until you are ready to bake. When you're ready to bake, take the cookies straight from the freezer to a lined cookie sheet. Bake as directed, but note that you may need to add a minute or two to the baking time.
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👩🏻🍳 My Expert Tips & Tricks
- A cookie by any other name: While we know these chocolate cookies as snowball cookies, you may have also seen them called Mexican wedding cakes or cookies or Russian tea cakes.
- Keep 'em round: Overmixed dough makes for flat, sad cookies. We add the flour last in this recipe to avoid this, but you also want to make sure that once the flour is added, you are mixing just until it is fully incorporated into the dough.
- Keep it cool: If the dough feels overly soft while you are rolling it, stick the bowl in the fridge for 15-30 minutes to firm back up...otherwise your cookies will spread. You may also want to chill the dough in between filling cookie sheets.
- Roll 'em twice: A double roll through powdered sugar will give your cookies an even, thick snowy coating.
🍪 More Great Christmas Cookie Recipes:
If you tried these chocolate snowball cookies or any other recipe on my blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the comments!
📖 Recipe
Chocolate Snowball Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup salted butter room temperature
- 1 ½ cup powdered sugar divided
- ½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup mini chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In a large bowl, use an electric hand mixer on medium speed to cream the butter with ½ cup powdered sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add the cocoa powder and vanilla and continue mixing until smooth and silky.
- Turn the mixer to low speed and add the flour, salt, and chocolate chips while the mixer is running.
- Roll out tablespoonfuls of dough into balls. A small cookie scoop may be helpful.
- Place dough balls on the prepared baking sheet and bake in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes, or until the bottoms are just slightly darker and the tops have lost their shininess.
- Transfer cookies to a cooling rack and allow to cool for 15 minutes.
- Roll warm cookies in remaining 1 cup powdered sugar and allow to finish cooling, then repeat this step again for extra "snowy" finish.
Notes
- Mix the flour in until it is just incorporated-overmixing will make the cookies flat!
- If the dough feels super soft and sticky, stick the bowl in the fridge for 15-30 minutes before rolling out your cookie balls.
- You must wait for the cookies to cool a bit before the first roll in powdered sugar, or the sugar will melt right off.
I've always made regular snowball cookies with blanched almonds, but these chocolate ones are like a cross between those and our favorite chocolate crinkle cookies. Definitely don't skip this recipe!