The Chocolate Crinkle Cookie Bake Off
And all of my 2023 holiday cookie recommendations
The chocolate crinkle cookie bake off is fresh off the press!
While cookie bake offs are no small feat in my tiny Manhattan apartment where baking more than one sheet of cookies in the oven at a time requires a lot of rotating/switching racks for even baking, this crinkle cookie bake off was less of a headache than most. The grand majority of these recipes call for chilling the dough ahead of time (my dream when trying to prep ahead of time for a bake off). For a no-chill recipe, Cook’s Illustrated and Bakerita were the two I tried (both fantastic in very different ways).
What does this mean for you? Chocolate crinkle cookies are an amazing asset to holiday baking where you’re trying to prep dough ahead of time.
If you take away nothing else from this bake off, remember this: rolling your crinkle cookie dough ball in granulated sugar BEFORE powdered sugar will help preserve a pristine white coating on your cookies.
Notice how the powdered sugar yellows slightly on the Danielle Sepsy and Sally’s Baking Addiction cookie? Cloudy Kitchen’s theory is that butter-based cookies leach water during baking, which dampens and discolors the powdered sugar. The granulated sugar provides a protective barrier to prevent this! (It’s really only needed for butter-based cookies, so no need if you’re using an oil-based dough.)
Thank you to Jacqueline, the winner of the founding subscriber lottery who helped select this bake off (also a great friend of mine)!
(In case you missed it, I offer one lucky founding subscriber the option to pick one bake off or micro bake off per year 💫 )
2023 in reflection - sappy words from me
This past November marked one year of being laid off from my product marketing job in tech and transitioning to Pancake Princess as a full-time job.
Before getting laid off, it always sounded like such a benign, hazy term to me. People get laid off, they find a new job. After going through it, I now get the baggage that it carries—the quick, paralyzing worry for the future with stability yanked out from under you, the endless wondering why me no matter how clearly they explain it to you, the fear that you were never really good at your job anyway.
When I first got laid off, I decided that I would ride out my severance and try to build up Pancake Princess, but also keep applying to jobs. I found my attention split and constantly distracted from both paths. It took going to dinner with a friend to change my mindset and go all in. “I think you should believe in yourself. Why don’t you try it just for a year? Invest in yourself. You can always do something else if it doesn’t work out,” she said.
One year later, I’m so glad I did. I’m happier than I’ve ever been in a corporate job and I actually feel lucky that I got laid off because to be honest—I never would have quit to make this leap. I truly had to be forced off a cliff. And it’s become a viable career path through a variety of avenues: ad revenue, content creation for other creators, brand partnerships, social media management, food photography and subscriptions (thank you!).
If you’re thinking about making moves—whether it’s switching jobs, quitting your job, picking up a passion project or anything else, I think about what another friend said to me. “Why NOT you?” People are out here succeeding every day—why can’t that be you?
Anyway, thank you so much for your support and for being here. It means so much to me. If we haven’t already met, I hope that we get to meet at a future bake off! (And if you ever have any questions about being a content creator, feel free to email me!)
Wondering how your favorite stacks up?
This master spreadsheet contains most of my bake off spreadsheets where I collect and compare recipes. If you ever want to compare your favorite recipes against the ones I’ve tested, this will make it easy!
Holiday Cookies
For curated cookie suggestions (especially on which cookies I recommend for shipping), I lay everything out in this post. Hope you have a wonderful holiday season!
And for even more recipe inspiration:
Best Blondie Bake Off: Your favorite blondie recipe (ahem, Broma) with holiday sprinkles would be so cute!
Snickerdoodle Bake Off: For a twist, try rolling your snickerdoodles in a different spice mix—ginger and cinnamon, cardamom sugar, or a chai spice sugar.
Sugar Cookie Bake Off: I prefer icing my sugar cookies with American buttercream if I have the energy, but a royal icing does dry firmer and more cleanly if you’re trying to ship cookies.
Ginger Molasses Cookie Bake Off: Try adding candied ginger to any of these recipes to add a burst of flavor and texture.
Gingerbread Cookie Bake Off: I’ve done a lot of coverage on my two favorite recipes from this bake off—here and here if you want step by step video tutelage!
M&M Cookie Bake Off: Red and green M&Ms, say less?!
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie Bake Off: I always think the lacey, nubbly texture of oatmeal cookies is a welcome standout in a holiday cookie assortment!
Black and White Cookie Bake Off: I love a holiday riff on these cakey cookies (example here with pistachios and pomegranate!)
Lofthouse Cookie Bake Off: If normal sugar cookies bore you, these frosted cookies are so pillowy and and flavorful and would be so cute with holiday sprinkles.
Levain Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookie Bake Off: People always ask for the recipe when I make my fav Hijabs & Aprons recipe!
Levain Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookie Bake Off: Absolute stunners for any peanut butter lovers in your life.
Peanut Butter Cookie Bake Off: Dipping peanut butter cookies in chocolate with a few sprinkles would be so cute!
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Bake Off: To make any of these recipes a little fancier, I’d use a mix of bittersweet chips, dark chocolate feves and maybe a chopped chocolate bar.
Vegan Brownie Bake Off: Use any of the brownies here (or from the original brownie bake off) as a basis for peppermint, grasshopper or peanut butter brownies!