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These Give Me Some Sugga! Fudge Cookies are rich, fudgy, and finished with a sparkly sugar coating that gives them a lightly crisp shell. They’re simple to make with everyday ingredients, and you’re going to love that soft chocolate center and crackled edges. No fancy techniques or hard-to-find ingredients needed.
Why You’ll Love It
- Quick to make — about 15 minutes of prep and 8 minutes of baking for small cookies.
- No chilling required — mix, roll in sugar, and bake.
- Deep chocolate flavor — cocoa powder creates a rich, fudgy cookie center.
- Sparkly sugar coating — adds a lightly crisp shell and pretty crackled finish.
Ingredient Notes
Use regular unsweetened cocoa powder here, not hot cocoa mix. Hot cocoa mix has sugar and milk powder and all kinds of business in it, and it will not give you that true fudge-cookie depth. Regular cocoa powder is dependable and available practically everywhere. There are fancier brands, sure, but they aren’t necessary here.
The butter needs to be softened, not Melted into a puddle. If you forget to set it out, cut it into little pieces and let it sit while you gather everything else. Don’t microwave it until it’s half liquid. Melted butter can make the cookies spread into strange chocolate pancakes.
Granulated sugar does double duty: two cups go into the dough, and then you’ll need more for rolling. Pour some into a shallow bowl and add more as needed. How much extra? Maybe half a cup, maybe a little less. It depends on how generously you roll them.
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 2 cups granulated sugar, plus extra sugar for rolling the cookies
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 350°F. Leave your cookie sheets ungreased. These cookies don’t need it.
In the bowl of a mixer, cream together the softened butter and the 2 cups of sugar. Let it go until it looks light and fluffy, not just mashed together. This is where the cookies get some of their nice texture. Scrape down the bowl once to catch any stubborn stripe of butter hiding on the side.
Add the eggs and vanilla extract. Blend until the batter is soft and fluffy again. It may look a little odd for a minute when the eggs first go in—sort of shiny and loose—but keep mixing. It comes around.
Add the cocoa powder, flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir until you have a thick, well-formed chocolate dough. Thick is right. You’ll get around 3 dozen cookies, depending on whether you make them properly teaspoon-sized or whether your idea of a teaspoon is, shall we say, optimistic.
Put some extra granulated sugar in a small bowl. Roll a teaspoonful of dough into a small ball, then roll it around in the sugar until it’s coated all over. Use your hands for this because a spoon makes it needlessly complicated. If the dough starts sticking too much, wash and dry your hands halfway through.
Place the sugar-coated dough balls about 2 inches apart on the ungreased cookie sheets. They spread a bit, so don’t crowd them.
Bake the small cookies for 8 minutes. If you make larger dough balls, bake them for 10 minutes instead. Don’t wait for them to look fully done in the middle; they’ll finish settling as they cool. Overbaked chocolate cookies are nobody’s friend. They go from fudgy to “well, they’re good dunked in coffee” in a hurry.
Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 1 minute before moving them to a cooling rack. That minute matters. They’re tender when they first come out, and if you try to move them immediately, you may leave half a cookie behind on the pan.
If your kitchen is warm, keep the dough in the refrigerator between batches. Summer baking can be a little foolish, frankly. The dough can get softer and softer until it feels like chocolate mud. Delicious mud, but still.
Variations
These are delicious exactly as they are, but chocolate chips can be added to the dough for an extra-rich cookie. They turn out almost too rich.
Chopped walnuts can also be added, though they distract from that soft fudgy center.
For the holidays, you can roll them in colored sugar instead of plain White, but regular granulated sugar gives that lovely crackled look without making the cookie seem like it’s trying too hard.
Storage & Reheating
Keep the cooled cookies in an airtight container at room temperature, and they should stay nice and soft for several days.
If you want to freeze them, freeze the baked cookies once they’re completely cool. They thaw nicely on the counter. You can also warm one for just a few seconds in the microwave if you want that just-baked softness again—but truly, go easy. Ten seconds is usually plenty. Any longer and the sugar coating gets a little strange, and then you’re eating a hot cookie that has the texture of a kitchen sponge. Not ideal.
The dough can get soft if the kitchen is warm, so refrigerate it between batches as needed. Don’t usually make the dough ahead of time because it can be easy to forget it’s in there behind the leftovers and a jar of pickles.
Final Notes
These cookies are the kind to keep on a plate in the middle of the table. A cookie should not require a formal invitation.
They’re rich, simple, and always worth reaching for.
And you say, “No, they’re terrible. Leave them alone.”
They never do.
Give Me Some Sugga! Fudge Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter softened
- 2 cups granulated sugar plus extra sugar for rolling the cookies
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350°F and leave your cookie sheets ungreased.
- In the bowl of a mixer, cream together the softened butter and 2 cups of granulated sugar until light and fluffy, scraping down the bowl once as needed.
- Add the eggs and vanilla extract, then blend until the batter is soft and fluffy again.
- Add the cocoa powder, flour, baking soda, and salt, then stir until a thick, well-formed chocolate dough forms.
- Put extra granulated sugar in a small bowl, roll a teaspoonful of dough into a small ball, and roll it in the sugar until coated all over.
- Place the sugar-coated dough balls about 2 inches apart on the ungreased cookie sheets so they have room to spread.
- Bake small cookies for 8 minutes, or bake larger dough balls for 10 minutes, removing them before the centers look fully done so they stay fudgy.
- Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 1 minute before moving them to a cooling rack.
- If your kitchen is warm, keep the dough in the refrigerator between batches so it does not become too soft.