26 Easy Cookie Recipes You Can Bake Anytime

Something for Everyone

Whether you seek something gooey, chewy, ultra-chocolatey, loaded with fun sprinkles, or just want to eat straight-up cookie dough, these easy recipes are the solution whenever the dessert craving hits. You’ll find creative ideas (mug cookie, anyone?) as well as plenty of the classics — chocolate chip cookies included — all of them so tempting you’ll be running to the kitchen to preheat the oven. Best of all, none of these recipes are difficult to make. Some are no-bake, some come together with limited ingredients or equipment and others are simply un-fussy. No matter what kind of baker you are, there’s something in this roundup for you! Craving a full-on chocolate overload, packed with cocoa powder and semisweet chips? Try Sunny’s rich and tender treats that taste just like a slice of German chocolate cake.

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Sunny’s German Chocolate Cake Cookies

Mug Cookie

Leave the sheet trays and pans in the cabinet. Don’t crank up the oven. Instead, pull out a coffee cup and clear your microwave because we’re making a mug cookie. This single-serving decadence earns a tender, gooey dough from a single egg yolk (save the whites for a morning omelet!) and it forms the base for whatever mix-ins – chocolate, rainbow sprinkles, nuts, dried fruit — your sweet tooth desires.

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Mug Cookie

Air Fryer Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are brilliantly baked in the air fryer, the end product being a treat that, in less than 10 mins per batch, hits the bliss point between crisp edges and a gooey center. They bake up in a flash — and they’re a blast to eat. Keep a few dough balls in the freezer so you can make dessert at any moment!

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Air Fryer Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sprinkle Biscotti

Seeing as how rainbow sprinkles bring a smile to so many of our faces, it’s no surprise that Molly transformed round sugar cookies into a crunchy, sprinkled, easy-to-make biscotti. A generous amount of confetti sprinkles are folded into a fragrant coconut-vanilla dough. Big slabs of biscuits are baked on a sheet tray, then they are cut into thick pieces and baked once more for extra crispiness. Molly says, “I love these because the texture is so satisfyingly crunchy!” Us too, Molly. Us, too.

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Sprinkle Biscotti

Peanut Butter-Chocolate No-Bake Cookies

For the quickest cookie, skip the oven entirely and go the no-bake route instead. After a super fast boil (How fast? 1 minute! That’s how fast!), you just dollop the dough onto a tray to let them chill out — and voilà!

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Peanut Butter-Chocolate No-Bake Cookies

Sprinkled Sugar Skillet Cookie

If you’re a sucker for thick caramelized edges, your best bet is to make this giant skillet cookie.

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Sprinkled Sugar Skillet Cookie

Compost Cookies

Pastry chef Christina Tosi’s compost cookies were so ingenious, they once broke the internet. Now, you can make a batch of the famous cookies from the comfort and ease of your own kitchen. Plus, the no-mixer recipe is endlessly adaptable — work with any myriad of candy, chips and cereal tucked inside your snack cabinet.

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Compost Cookies

Forgotten Cookies

The name of these one-bowl meringue cookies works twofold. First, you pop them into an inactive oven for 4 hours or overnight — meaning you can set it, forget it, and wake up to fresh, crispy-outside-melty-inside cookies. Second, you’ll make them once and never forget to make them again (and again…and again!).

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Forgotten Cookies

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cocoa plus chocolate chips makes the ultimate fudgy cookies. The best part? The recipe comes together in under 30 minutes without an electric mixer. Rich flavor doesn’t get much easier than this.

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Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

The classic cookie gets a remix into a treat that’s all the more snackable and easily shareable. As the recipe has you mixing by hand, take caution to mix the batter until just combined or else too much gluten can develop, and the final cookie bars will turn out tough and dry — not extra gooey and rich, as they should be!

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Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Butter and Jam Thumbprints

If you’re a fan of slathering jam on top of everything, here’s your new favorite cookie recipe: a buttery rich dough that’s scooped, pressed, filled and baked until edges turn golden.

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Butter and Jam Thumbprints

Monster Cookie Dough

Good news! It can be safe and delightful to eat raw cookie dough. The trick is to shock your flour in the microwave which will heat-treat it and as a result, get rid of any bacteria that may otherwise cause food-borne illness.

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Monster Cookie Dough

Snickerdoodles

How can you go wrong with snickerdoodles? The mixing method to Trisha Yearwood’s treats delivers a fluffy crumb, while the cinnamon sugar lacquers each cookie with sweet crackly spice. Enjoy with a cup of tea or glass of milk for a nice afternoon pick-me-up. Or, simply enjoy a couple as-is.

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Snickerdoodles

No-Bake Cookies

Thanks to no-bake cookies, warm weather baking has never been cooler.

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No-Bake Cookies

Blue Corn Thumbprint Cookies

Crystal Wahpepah says, “The cooks at Wahpepah’s Kitchen represent many tribes beyond my own Kickapoo, and I source ingredients from Native American farmers throughout the country. The blue corn I use in waffles, mush and cookies comes from the Ute Tribe of Colorado. Blue corn lends itself to desserts because of its natural sweetness that’s only enhanced once it’s ground. So, the cookies themselves don’t require a lot of sugar. I fill the little divot made by my thumb with a compote of whatever berries are in season–my favorites are the slightly bitter chokecherries of mid-July and the tart huckleberries of late summer. ”

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Blue Corn Thumbprint Cookies

Haystacks

These stir-and-scoop crunchers rely on four simple ingredients you probably have in the pantry as we speak, and not one of them is flour.

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Haystacks

Eight-Flavor Sheet Pan Brownie-Cookie Bars

A tube of store-bought cookie dough and boxed brownies join forces to build the easiest sheet pan bars. The recipe also gives you not only one, but eight unique and equally simple-to-bake dessert slabs, each dotted with the most delightful toppings. From pretzels over crushed potato chips, M&M’s drizzled in zigzags of creamy icing and showered with sprinkles, to graham cracker bears and toasted marshmallows that teleport you to summer campfires, you’d be hard-pressed to find a cookie fan who wouldn’t want to break off a hunk of this epic treat.

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Eight-Flavor Sheet Pan Brownie-Cookie Bars

Ultimate Ginger Cookie

Not a regular ginger cookie, the ultimate ginger cookie. What takes it to the next level? A whole lotta chopped crystallized ginger; folded into the ground ginger-spiked batter. It makes for a complex sweet treat. The addition of vegetable oil instead of butter saves the cookie from developing too much gluten and, to lend a helping hand, the molasses further tenderizes the cookie’s plush belly.

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Ultimate Ginger Cookie

Chewy Sugar Cookies

Sweet, sugary, and simple with plenty of chew to boot. Better make a double batch!

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Chewy Sugar Cookies

Italian Spumoni Cookies

Leave it Jeff Mauro to smush cherries, pistachios, and almonds — the classic flavors embodied in Spumoni, the classic triple-layered gelato dessert — into gooey big-scooped, one-bowl cookies that rely on pantry fixings.

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Italian Spumoni Cookies (“Spumookies”)

Gluten-Free Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Even the most gluten-enthused cookie connoisseurs will be head over heels for baker Erin Mckenna’s double chocolate chip cookies. Did we mention they’re also vegan?

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Gluten-Free Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Magic Bars

Anyone who ever said cookie-making is hard, clearly hasn’t gotten to try out the easy alchemy that is these magic bars, also known as Hello Dolly bars or seven-layer bars. Each part of this cookie bar is built through piling one simple ingredient on top of the next, but how the components meld all together in the oven makes it look, feel and best of all, taste complex — and, well, like magic.

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Magic Bars

Apple-Cinnamon Breakfast Cookies

Not only do these cookies come together fast using one bowl and without any special equipment, but they’re packed with great energy to kick-start your day thanks to rolled oats, unsweetened applesauce and coconut oil. The applesauce lends a pleasant natural sweetness all the while stepping in place of eggs as a fantastic binding agent and keeping these breakfast cookies fully vegan.

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Apple-Cinnamon Breakfast Cookies

Earl Grey Shortbread Cookies

From the outsider’s perspective, a plate of Earl Grey shortbread cookies will look and taste like they come from a fancy tea shop in Scotland. Whether or not they find out they actually came together in your kitchen with a few quick pulses of a food processor, well that’s up to you. Baker’s tip: don’t forget to chill the dough! As tempting as it is to bake it immediately, shortbread benefits from a rest in the fridge which in turn, firms up its butter pieces to yield a crumblier bite. It also brings out the sugar by evaporating some water from its dough.

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Earl Grey Shortbread Cookies

Lemon Crinkle Cookies

You don’t have to wait for life to hand you lemons. Chances are, you already have everything you need to make this juicy batch of crinkle cookies. Skip the yellow food coloring if you don’t have it — the sunshine bright citrus flavor will beam through no matter what.

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Lemon Crinkle Cookies

3-Ingredient Cookie Butter Cookies

Sugar, flour, butter, eggs. You can’t make a cookie if any of these staples are missing, right? Wrong. Sometimes, if one ingredient has the right genes (read: the perfect amounts of starch, fat and sugar), it can step in and let most of those baking superstars take the day off. In this case, that one ingredient is creamy nut-free cookie butter. By getting coaxed with just oats and one egg, it quickly makes a fudgy, satisfying baked good that honestly, won’t have you longing for a cookie made with the typical cast of characters.

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3-Ingredient Cookie Butter Cookies