Double Chocolate Cake Mix Cookies

Four ingredients. Twenty minutes. Two dozen chocolate cookies that look and taste like you spent the afternoon baking. This is the lazy baker’s secret weapon and the reason every potluck dessert table seems to have a plate of fudgy chocolate cookies somewhere.

The trick is using a devil’s food cake mix that has the pudding mix already built in. The added pudding gives the cookies a softer, denser, more brownie-like texture than plain cake mix would, and the cookies stay moist for days afterward instead of going stale by day two.

The dough comes out stiff and slightly sticky, which is exactly right. Rolling tablespoonfuls between dampened hands keeps them from sticking, or just drop them straight from a cookie scoop onto the sheet. They spread modestly during baking, so two inches of space is plenty.

Pull the cookies when they look just set on top but still slightly soft in the middle. They firm up dramatically as they cool, and an extra two minutes in the oven gives you hard, crunchy disappointments instead of the soft fudgy treats you want.

Pro Tips

• Use devil’s food cake mix with pudding in the mix for the proper soft fudgy texture, plain cake mix gives a cakier dryer result
• Mix with an electric mixer to fully incorporate the dry mix into the wet ingredients, hand stirring leaves dry pockets
• Resist the urge to flatten the dough balls, these cookies need their height to bake fudgy in the middle
• Cool the first 5 minutes on the pan so they finish setting, moving them too soon and they crumble apart
• Store in an airtight container with a slice of bread to keep them soft for days

Variations

• Swap semisweet morsels for white chocolate, peanut butter chips, or chopped peanut butter cups
• Roll the dough balls in powdered sugar before baking for crinkle-style cookies
• Press a Hershey’s Kiss into the center of each cookie right out of the oven for blossom-style cookies
• Add a half teaspoon of espresso powder to the dough for deeper chocolate flavor