Need A New Cookie Recipe? Chai Crinkle Cookies Is The One

Most crinkle cookie recipes are chocolate but these buttery cream-cheese crinkle cookies just might have you think twice about making chocolate crinkles.

If you love sweet buttery chewy cookies with a little spice, you will love these chai crinkle cookies.

This is a subtle cookie that you can’t stop eating, and it is equally at home with a cup of hot tea or coffee, or a dram of your favorite brown spirt.

The complex spices found in chai tea, including cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, nutmeg and cloves, add a sophistication to the cookie without hitting you over the head with flavor. This means that even your plain Jane, vanilla cookie lover will enjoy this cookie as much as the anything-goes cookie enthusiast.

The texture is addicting. It is soft and chewy in the center making it very satisfying to eat, and if you aren’t careful, you may eat more than your fair share. I prefer this type of sugar cookie to the traditional crisp decorated Christmas cookie, which often times looks prettier than it tastes.

The inspiration for this cookie which has both butter and cream cheese in it, was a new spice blend that I discovered made by Watkins 1868. The Watkins Chai Powder is an all-organic combination of sugar, cinnamon, black tea, cardamom, ginger, nutmeg and cloves. I love that it includes ground black tea in it to really make it taste like Chai. I have a feeling that the powder was probably made for flavoring hot milk and tea but it is a dynamite seasoning for this butter crinkle.

The cookie dough is made in a stand mixer traditionally by creaming the softened butter, cream cheese and sugar; adding an egg, vanilla, and the flour mixture. I whisk the chai powder in with the flour just as you would any spices.

Once you have your dough mixed, you generously roll your balls of dough in a mixture of powdered sugar, more chai powder, and fine-grain sea salt. The sea salt is essential since this is a very sweet cookie and a little salt is necessary to balance the flavors.

As the cookie rises and expands in the oven, the flavored powdered sugar remains on the parts of the dough that were rolled, and the expanded cookie makes a pattern of crinkles and crevices, thus the name crinkle cookie. In fact the chocolate crinkle is sometimes called an earthquake cookie because it looks like the soil pattern after an earthquake. I love the natural pattern of the crinkles—the exact shapes are a surprise every time on every cookie.

Many recipes attribute the crinkles to chilling the dough, but I discovered that the best crinkles came from the dough right after I mixed it when the raw dough was room temperature. They were more consistent, more compact and less spread apart. When I baked the cold “chilled” dough, they were easier to scoop, but you get more craters than crinkles. If you like a more even texture, bake right after you mix the dough. [You can see the difference in the cookies I photographed for this story. The cookies cooling on the rack at the top of the story were baked immediately after mixing, and the cookies at the bottom of the story with the Poinsettia were baked after being chilled.]

If you’re a fan of snickerdoodles, you will love this cookie as it reminds me of the sweeter, more gentle cousin of a snickerdoodle. Snickerdoodles are a little sassier and a little more toasty in flavor than this Chai Crinkle Cookie, but they complement each other and I would never say no to either of them.

Chai Crinkle Cookies

I originally made these cookies with cinnamon and nutmeg and then I discovered the Watkins 1868 Chai powder. The Chai powder gives it just the right amount of spice and adds cardamom, ginger, cloves and tea to the mix!

Makes about 48 cookies.

Cookie Dough:

1/2 cup (1 stick) salted butter*, softened

1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened

1-1/2 cups granulated white sugar

1 large egg, room temperature

1 generous teaspoon vanilla extract

2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 ½ teaspoons Watkins 1868 Chai powder

1/2 cup confectioners sugar, sifted to remove lumps

3 teaspoons baking powder

*you can use unsalted butter and add 1/4 teaspoon salt

Topping:

1/2 cup confectioners sugar

½ teaspoon Chai powder

¼ teaspoon fine-grain sea salt

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl using a hand-held mixer, or a stand mixer using the paddle attachment, beat butter, cream cheese and granulated sugar until well blended and creamy. Add in egg and vanilla and beat until completely mixed.

Whisk together flour, Chia powder, baking powder, and the 1/2 cup confectioners sugar. [If you like things a little spicer, increase the Chia powder to 2 1/2 teaspoons.] With the mixer on low, slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and beat gently until completely incorporated.

Meanwhile, make the topping by mixing the confectioners sugar, Chai Powder and salt; set aside.

Using a cookie scoop, scoop dough and release it into the confectioners’ sugar topping mixture. Roll the dough into a ball and make sure it is generously coated all over with the confectioners sugar mixture.

Place 3 dough balls across on parchment paper-lined baking sheets. I usually get 4 rows or 12 dough balls evenly separated from each other because they spread quite a bit.

Bake until they are set and just beginning to color around the sides, 10-16 minutes depending on the size of your cookies. If you like them softer, bake less. If you like them a bit crisper, bake them longer. Whichever way you like them, check at 10 minutes to determine their progress.

Remove from oven and let sit 5 minutes. Remove cookies to wire racks to cool.

The cookies are good warm, but even better once they cool completely. They also freeze very well.