These 6-ingredient chocolate shortbread cookies are a chocolatey spin on classic shortbread. They are equally as buttery and crisp, and they hold their shape beautifully!
6-Ingredient Chocolate Shortbread Cookies
Squeezing in one more cookie recipe before Christmas! This is a very simple recipe for chocolate shortbread cookies. They might look similar to the chocolate sugar cookies I recently shared, but unlike those soft and chewy cookies, these chocolatey cookies are crisp and buttery (like their classic shortbread counterparts)! I love dunking them in melted chocolate, and even more than that, I like to add lots of nonpareil sprinkles, which gives them a nonpareil (or snowcaps!) feel. Yum!
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Simple & classic, but SO good! They can hold their own against even fancier, more time consuming cookies like my brown butter toffee cookies or praline cookies.
- Rich, chocolatey, and buttery flavor that is even better if you use a high quality butter (recommendations below).
- Minimal chilling time--only 30 minutes–and so easy to make too! Get the kids involved and have them help you cut out the shapes or add sprinkles.
- Customizable! Cut the cookies into your favorite shape (or slice and bake), add holiday sprinkles (how cute would these be with pink and red sprinkles for Valentine’s day?!), dip them in white chocolate, or serve them plain. You can really have fun with these!
Ingredients
Only six ingredients today! These cookies are as simple as it gets.
- Cocoa powder. I recommend using Dutch process cocoa, which gives you a more flavorful, more chocolatey cookie than natural cocoa powder would. If you want to use natural cocoa, you can, but the flavor is just not as rich and chocolatey (save that one for your crinkle cookies).
- Butter. If you can, use a European butter (like Kerrygold or Vermont Creamery). This will give your chocolate shortbread a richer, more buttery flavor (just like when making my lemon meltaway cookies).
- Powdered sugar. We’ll be swapping out the usual granulated sugar for powdered sugar today. This yields more tender, melt-in-your-mouth results.
- Vanilla and salt. For flavor, of course! If you use salted butter, you can omit the salt, otherwise your chocolate shortbread cookies will be too salty.
- Flour. All-purpose flour works just fine in this recipe, and the recipe works with bleached or unbleached flour (I exclusively use unbleached these days). I haven’t tried making this recipe gluten free, but I suspect a 1:1 gluten free flour would work. If you try it, I’d love to know how it goes for you!
Note that the fact that there is no egg, baking powder, or baking soda is intentional. Shortbread is classically made without egg and always made without a leavening agent. This is key to that buttery flavor and crumbly, dense texture that we love.
SAM’S TIP: Get fancy and dip your cookies in chocolate! I like to melt a chopped semi-sweet baking chocolate bar (or chocolate chips), dip half of each cookie in chocolate, and then top with colorful sprinkles.
Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Chocolate Shortbread Cookies
Make & chill the dough
Beat the butter with an electric mixer for 2 minutes or until well creamed and velvety. Reduce the mixer speed to low and gradually stir in the powdered sugar and cocoa powder.
Add the vanilla and salt, then gradually stir in the flour until completely incorporated. Make sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl to make sure there are no dry pockets hiding!
Divide the dough into two discs and wrap in plastic (or wax paper or parchment). Chill for at least 30 minutes–you may need to chill it longer if your butter was particularly soft or if your kitchen is very warm.
Roll & cut
Unwrap and roll the dough just shy of ¼” thick. Cut as many shapes out of your first roll as possible (second and third roll cookies are usually a bit wonky and dry), then regroup the scraps and keep cutting until you have used all of your dough. No waste here!
Note that I do not recommend rolling the cookies out on powdered sugar or cocoa powder, just stick with a light dusting of flour.
Bake the cookies, giving them a bit of breathing room on the baking sheet (but they shouldn’t spread, so they don’t need a whole lot of space between them). Depending on the size and thickness of your cookies, your bake time may be shorter or longer than indicated in the recipe. I recommend doing a test batch to nail down the right time for your cookies!
Let the cookies cool for at least 10 minutes on their baking sheets before you remove and enjoy (or decorate!).
SAM’S TIP: Just like with sugar cookies and Linzer cookies, rolling the cookies to different thicknesses will require different amounts of baking time and will give you a different yield. I rolled my cookies to ¼” thick and used 2 ½-3″ cookie cutters here. This resulted in 60 cookies that baked for 12-14 minutes. If you make your cookies larger or thicker, your bake time will increase and your yield will decrease. The opposite will happen if you make smaller cookies.
Dip & decorate (optional)
If desired, dip your cookies in melted chocolate and top with sprinkles (I like nonpareils!). You can also drizzle the chocolate over the cookies, if you don’t want to dip them. Let the chocolate harden before you dig in, and enjoy!
Note that this recipe shares a very simple method of just melting chopped chocolate bars (or couverture chocolate) and dipping the cookies and doesn’t include instructions for tempering chocolate, which is more time consuming. The difference is that sometimes un-tempered chocolate may be a bit white and streaky when it firms up. This is totally fine to eat still, just not as pretty! If you want to make sure it doesn’t happen, follow the instructions for melting chocolate that I share in my chocolate covered pretzels or hot cocoa bombs.
Frequently Asked Questions
How frustrating! This can happen if your dough is too warm or if you over-beat your butter. Chilling should remedy this, so if your test batch of cookies spreads a bit more than you’d like, try popping your dough back in the fridge for a bit!
Deep breath! First, double-check that you measured everything correctly, especially the flour. Flour should be measured using the stir, scoop and level method or (preferably!) using a kitchen scale. It’s also important to make sure that you add the flour into the butter mixture gradually. Adding it all at once can overwhelm the dough, making it difficult for the flour to absorb and making the dough crumbly as a result. Fortunately, if you just keep stirring, it will come together. If it doesn’t, something was unfortunately mis-measured.
This should work just fine! Instead of forming your dough into two discs, you can form it into one log and chill it that way (just like when making my icebox cookies). When you’re ready to bake, slice into ¼” slices and bake (no need to alter the oven temp)!
Have you ever had chocolate shortbread before? If so, are you team extra chocolate (and sprinkles), or do you prefer it plain?
Enjoy!
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Chocolate Shortbread Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter softened
- ¾ cup (95 g) powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups (250 g) all-purpose flour
- ¼ cup (25 g) Dutch-process cocoa powder
- ½ teaspoon table salt
- 6 oz (170 g) chopped baking chocolate for dipping (optional, may substitute 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips)
- Sprinkles or nonpareils for decorating (optional)
Recommended Equipment
Instructions
- Place butter in a large mixing bowl (or in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment) and use an electric mixer to beat on high-speed until well-creamed (at least 2 minutes on high speed).1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter
- With mixer on low-speed, gradually stir in powdered sugar, then cocoa powder.¾ cup (95 g) powdered sugar, ¼ cup (25 g) Dutch-process cocoa powder
- Stir in vanilla extract and salt.1 teaspoon vanilla extract, ½ teaspoon table salt
- With mixer on low-speed, gradually stir in flour until completely combined (scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl periodically to ensure ingredients are well-combined).2 cups (250 g) all-purpose flour
- Turn out onto a clean surface and divide dough into two parts. Form each into a smooth, round disc (lightly flour your hands if the dough is too sticky to manage), wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Note that if your butter or kitchen are particularly warm, you may need to chill the dough longer, but in my kitchen I typically find that anything longer than 30 minutes makes the dough difficult to roll out and prone to cracking. If you do have to or want to chill your dough longer, don’t panic! Just let it sit (wrapped) on the counter at room temperature for 15-20 minutes or until it can be rolled out without cracking (dough should not be warm though).
- Preheat oven to 350F (175C) and line baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
Rolling and Baking
- Once dough has chilled, remove from refrigerator and unwrap. Transfer to a lightly floured surface. Use a lightly floured rolling pin to roll cookies to ¼” (0.6cm) thick. Use cookie cutters to make close cuts in the dough and cut out as many shapes as possible. Once you’ve cut out all the shapes you can, regroup the dough and cut out even more shapes (the re-rolled cookies can sometimes look a bit funnier and be a bit more dry, so get as many cuts as you can the first time around!).
- Transfer cut-out cookies to prepared baking sheet, spacing cookies at least 1” (2.5cm) apart. Transfer to center rack of 350F (175C) preheated oven and bake for 12-14 minutes This will yield cookies that should have the perfect shortbread crispness to them once cooled.
- Allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet before removing to a rack to decorate with chocolate, if desired.
Chocolate (see note)
- Once cookies have cooled, decorate with chocolate if desired. Place chopped chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl and melt in 20 second intervals, stirring well in between, until completely melted. Transfer chocolate to a small bowl or mug and dip the cookies in chocolate (or drizzle the chocolate over the cookies). If desired, decorate with sprinkles while chocolate is still warm.6 oz (170 g) chopped baking chocolate, Sprinkles or nonpareils
- Allow chocolate to set before enjoying.
Notes
Servings/Yield
How many cookies you get out of this recipe will vary quite a bit depending on the size of your cookie cutter and the thickness that you roll your dough. When I roll into approximately ¼” (.6cm) and use 2” (5cm) star and heart cookie cutters, I get 60 cookies.Cook time
This will vary if you use different-sized cookie cutters or if you roll your dough thicker or thinner! Keep an eye on these cookies, and it’s even a smart idea to do a test tray.Chocolate
This recipe does not include instructions for tempering the chocolate as I typically don’t temper mine for cookies. Note that if the chocolate isn’t properly tempered, it may develop some white streaking. This is fine and won’t affect the taste. If you would like to temper the chocolate, follow steps 1-3 in my hot chocolate bombs.Storing
Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days or freeze (with or without chocolate/sprinkles) in an airtight container for several months.Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered an estimate only. Actual nutritional content will vary based upon brands used, measuring methods, cooking method, portion sizes, and more.
Eric
👋Hi Sam would it be ok if I added walnuts to this recipe, and if so would a cup sound about right?
Sam
Hi Eric! While I haven’t tried it, I think it could work. You will want to chop the nuts up really small though. Let me know how it goes! 🙂
Eric
Perfect as always thank you for your guidance. I will try your suggestion 😊
Cre
Can’t wait to try these! I think it It should be noted that the better butters have more water processed our of them, so when using a low-moisture recipe, the chilling time is important for the ingredients to meld. This will also help with the crumbling when rolling out, as well as firming up the butter.
Sydney
So pumped for a chocolate version! will natural cocoa powder substitute okay? I have 0 experience with Dutch process, but I could always try it if natural is a no-go. Thank you!!
Sam
Hi Sydney! If you want to use natural cocoa, you can, but the flavor is just not as rich and chocolatey. I hope you love these! 🙂