Crumbl-Style Cookies (5 Flavors)
A professional-style base recipe for building Crumbl-style cookies: thick, soft, and packed with flavor. The butter is creamed cold (never melted) to give the dough structure, there's no chilling required, and they go straight into the oven. With this same base dough you can build 5 different flavors: chocolate chip, double chocolate, red velvet, candy-coated chocolate, or pistachio.
- Base dough (for one flavor)
- 300 g (10.6 oz / 1⅓ cups) butter, cold but not hard (see step 1)
- 260 g (1¼ cups packed) moscabado or dark brown sugar
- 170 g (¾ cup + 2 tbsp) white sugar
- 130 g egg (about 2 large eggs)
- 12 g (2½ tsp) vanilla extract
- 545 g (4⅓ cups) all-purpose flour
- 6.5 g (1½ tsp) baking soda
- 5 g (1 tsp) baking powder
- 8 g (1½ tsp) fine salt
- 4 g (1½ tsp) ground cinnamon (optional) Pick a flavor to mix into the base dough
- Chocolate chip: 150 g (1 cup) chocolate chips
- Double chocolate: 150 g (1 cup) chocolate chips + 12 g (1½ tbsp) unsweetened cocoa powder
- Red velvet: 150 g (1 cup) white chocolate chips + 8 g (1 tbsp) unsweetened cocoa powder + 10 drops red food coloring
- Candy-coated chocolate (M&M's-style): 100 g (½ cup) candy-coated chocolate pieces + 50 g (⅓ cup) chocolate chips
- Pistachio: 150 g (1 cup) chopped pistachios + 3 drops green food coloring
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1
Prep the butter
Take the butter out of the fridge 15-20 minutes before starting: it should be cold but not rock-hard, and definitely not soft like pomade. The longer it can rest without getting to that soft pomade stage, the better it works in the mixer.
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2
Cream the butter and sugars
In the stand mixer bowl with the paddle attachment, add the butter and both sugars (the dark brown and the white). Beat on low speed for 3 minutes: let the friction of the sugar against the butter do the work, without rushing it. After those 3 minutes, bump the speed up one notch (medium-low, no higher) and beat for 3 more minutes, until it turns into an even, creamy mixture.
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3
Add the egg
Add the egg (or eggs, to reach the full 130 g) and beat for one more minute, until fully incorporated into the mixture.
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4
Add the dry ingredients, except the flour
Add the baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon (if using: it's optional, and the cookies are great without it too). Beat on low speed for just 10 seconds, only to combine.
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5
Flour and vanilla
Add all the flour together with the vanilla extract. Beat on low speed: in under a minute you'll already have the base dough ready. Stop beating as soon as no dry streaks of flour remain: that's what keeps the cookie tender instead of tough.
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6
Pick a flavor and mix it in
With the base dough ready, add the ingredients for whichever flavor you picked (see the flavor list above). Mix on low speed for just 30 seconds, only enough to combine: make sure it's evenly spread through the dough instead of sitting unmixed at the bottom of the bowl.
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7
Portion and weigh
Weigh out 70 g portions each (67-70 g is fine, it doesn't need to be exact to the gram) and roll them into neat balls with your hands. Place them on a tray lined with a silicone mat or parchment, spaced well apart.
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8
Bake straight away, no resting
Unlike other thick cookie recipes, this one needs no cold rest: go straight into the oven. Bake at 180°C (350°F) for 15 minutes.
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9
Let them rest before eating
Let them sit on the tray for a few minutes right out of the oven: they'll keep cooking inside from residual heat, and the center will finish setting. Eaten straight out of the oven, the middle will still feel raw.
- The butter should be neither fridge-cold nor pomade-soft: that in-between point is what makes the creaming with sugar work properly in the mixer and gives the dough its structure.
- 8 g of salt might sound like a lot for a sweet recipe, but it's intentional: that salty contrast is part of what makes this style of cookie taste the way it does.
- This base dough makes one flavor at a time: if you want to make several flavors from the list, prepare the full base dough again for each one.
- If you can't find moscabado (mascabo) sugar, dark brown sugar works as a substitute, though the final flavor will have a slightly less intense caramel note.
- Using butter straight from the fridge or melted: either way, creaming with the sugar won't work the same, and it changes the final texture.
- Overmixing once the flour goes in: stop as soon as the dry streaks disappear.
- Mixing in the flavor add-ins for too long or too hard: it breaks up the chocolate or pistachio pieces and ruins the even distribution.