Fudge Stripe Cookies are delicious. Crispy to the bite with melt-in-the-mouth chocolate coating on the bottom and stripes on top, they offer the perfect combination of chocolate and shortbread and make for a very satisfying cookie indeed!
Although the cookies are called Fudge Striped Cookies, they are actually Chocolate Striped Cookies.
Fudge and chocolate are terms that are often used interchangeably, but there are differences between chocolate and fudge. Chocolate is smooth, hard and shell-like, while fudge is soft and quite spongy.
Chocolate can be dark, milk or white in flavours, while fudge can be all sorts of flavors, including chocolate.
Many fudges are chocolate-free. Chocolate uses milk, sugar, cocoa butter and cocoa, while fudge has milk, sugar, butter and flavorings; the flavoring can be cocoa but doesn’t have to be.
Anyhow, it doesn’t matter if the terminology is ideal because everyone knows these distinctive striped cookies.
All versions of the cookie recipes that follow have six essential ingredients:
- All-purpose flour.
- Granulated sugar.
- Butter; usually unsalted.
- Salt.
- Vanilla extract.
- Chocolate.
The ingredients, bar the chocolate, are blended in a traditional shortbread manner. The chocolate is used to dip the bottom of the cookie in and to make stripes for the top of the cookie.
The essential ingredients can be added to particular recipes. Some recipes use egg and baking powder, some not. Generally, unsalted butter is preferred with the salt added independently.
However, you could use salted butter, and forgo added salt. The chocolate can be dark, semi-sweet or milk chocolate.
The standard recipes are a take on the Keebler original Fudge Striped Cookie. Keebler used an ELF logo – Everyone Loves Fudge – and had elves making the fudge stripes in their adverts.
According to Country Hill Cottage, there’s a super cute commercial from the 80s, featuring the Keebler elves, so the original Keebler Fudge Stripe Cookies must have come out in the late 70s or early 80s.
Today, Keebler offers lots of varieties of their Fudge Stripe Cookies: Fudge Stripes Dark Chocolate, Whoopsy Fudge Stripes, Mint Fudge Stripes, Gingerbread with white chocolate stripes and Strawberry shortcake with pink glaze.
In all the recipes you will need baking sheets, parchment paper or silicone mats, piping tips (round, size 1 for stripes and 2A for cutting out the center of the cookies), a round cookie cutter (3 inch) and a rolling pin.
Most of the recipes take about an hour, but a lot of that is cooling time. There are recipes that take longer and some that take less time. It depends on whether you are wanting a standard cookie or opting for a jazzier version.
Ambitious Kitchen suggests a few ways to make your cookies stand out from the pack.
To give the cookies some individuality, why not use a favourite chocolate bar to make the stripes and chocolate dipping? Flavors like mint, peppermint, brown butter, toffee and orange are recommended.
Chocolate bars like Theo, Alter Eco and Divine chocolate are also recommended, but obviously you can use whichever chocolate bar you are partial to. They suggest avoiding anything with nuts, quinoa or chunks in it.
You could add orange zest to the dough or another essence of your liking.
Why not try lavender, for example? After dipping the bottoms of your cookies in chocolate you could sprinkle them with, or dip them into, toasted coconut, toasted chopped pecans or sea salt for crunch.
The stripes needn’t be perfect. Ensure the stripes on the top have set before you dip the bottoms of the cookies in chocolate.
Also, remember to temper the chocolate. If you choose not to temper the chocolate, the cookies will need to be stored in the refrigerator in an airtight container to prevent the chocolate melting and creating a mess.
Some people find the shape and geometry of the cookies interesting; round with four parallel stripes and a hollow center. Eat from the outside in or go end to end of a stripe.
So many exciting ways to eat a Fudge Striped Cookie!
1.Best Fudge Stripe Cookies Recipe
Nina Caldas uses a recipe that is a slight adaptation of the recipe from The Bouchon Bakery Cookbook.
Caldas dips her shortbread cookies in semi-sweet chocolate for extra sweetness and to bring back fond memories of Keebler Fudge Stripe Cookies. The recipe makes 30 cookies.
Unsalted butter at room temperature, granulated sugar, Kosher salt, vanilla extract, all-purpose flour and chopped, semi-sweet chocolate ensure that this recipe stays true to the Keebler cookies template, but is enhanced by the homemade ambience.
2. Sweet Tooth And Sass
Carrie’s recipe uses milk chocolate and includes an egg in the ingredients. Otherwise, the rest of the ingredients are the usual essentials.
There are suggestions for sandwiching your fudge striped cookies, or turning them into s’mores. See Fudge Striped Cookie S’mores for a recipe for Fudge Striped S’mores, having the perfect balance of cookie, marshmallow and chocolate.
3. Saturdays With Frank
Reminiscing about his childhood penchant for Keebler’s Fudge Stripe Cookies, Frank from Saturdayswithfrank.com decided to make his own.
He uses the standard ingredients but likes to use both milk and dark chocolate mixed.
Frank uses a cookie stamp. He rolls the dough till thin and flat, cuts using a 3-inch round cookie cutter, and then uses the stamp to pattern each cookie.
4. Homemade Fudge Stripe Cookies Recipe – Food Fanatic
Food Fanatic uses dark chocolate, powdered sugar, salted butter; foregoing salt as an independent ingredient.
5. Cookies and Cups
Shelly uses egg and the usual ingredients in a recipe that takes 20 minutes.
She also has some ideas as to how to get the most out of your finished cookies. How about dipping your fudge stripe cookies in milk? Homemade ice cream sandwiches anyone?
6. We Are Not Martha
This recipe uses clarified butter, which produces a nuttier taste. Clarified butter has the milk solids and water removed to produce pure butterfat. It is sometimes called ‘ghee’ in Indian cooking.
To clarify your butter, start with more butter than you need, because you only end up with about 75% of the amount by the end of clarifying.
Melt the butter in a saucepan, till the solids separate from the fat, then let the butter sit for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, skim off the foam and pour the yellow liquid into a separate bowl.
Leave the milk solids at the bottom of the pan.
7. Sally’s Baking Addiction
In this version of the classic Keebler recipe, two cookies form a sandwich with a center of thick dark chocolate ganache.
To make the thick chocolate ganache you need heavy cream, such as heavy whipping cream or double cream, and pure chocolate, chopped. Heat the cream till it’s warm and pour it over the chocolate.
Baker’s, Ghirardelli, Nestle Toll House, or Lindt baking bars are suggested. See the chocolate ganache page.
8. Ambitious Kitchen
This vegan version has gluten free almond flour, which means these cookies are lower in carbohydrates and gluten free, while remaining buttery in taste and texture.
They don’t lose any of the essential shortbread consistency. A few tablespoons of pure maple syrup provide sweetness. Finely blanched almond flour is used for consistency.
To make it vegan, you could use melted coconut oil or vegan butter, instead of butter. A combination of vanilla and almond extract gives a wonderful flavor. Either add salt to the dough, or sprinkle sea salt over the finished cookies.
The recipe recommends 60-70% chocolate and opts for salted dark chocolate or mint dark chocolate but you can use any chocolate you like.
For a vegan option, go for a vegan dark chocolate bar; such as Alter Eco or Hu Chocolate.
9. Country Hill Cottage
Irena and Cyna use the usual ingredients for their shortbread cookies, but coat the cookies with agave syrup to give them a glossy appearance. Light corn syrup is an alternative. They also suggest some recipes, like their one for Fudge Stripe Cookies, that essentially copy the original recipes: Danish wedding cookies and gingerbread Oreos. And for more tasty shortbread cookies, lavender cookies and rose cookies.
10. Kimspired DIY
This recipe offers a keto version and cuts back on calories. There are only five ingredients: almond flour, butter, sugar-free syrup, vanilla extract and sugar-free chocolate chips.
In summary
Isn’t it amazing how nostalgia works? We all get it now and then.
You start harking back on the heady carefree days of your youth and invariably you start hankering after the sights, scents, tastes, cuddles and sounds you associate with happy memories.
Many people mention Fudge Striped Cookies in their rose-tinted amblings through childhood memories. We all have favorite candies and cookies and other such tastes.
If you are hankering after Fudge Striped Cookies, I hope that the above recipes and suggestions help you find a way to indulge your nostalgia.
If you just fancy a cookie to nibble because you want one, and it’s nothing to do with nostalgia, then Fudge Striped Cookies ought to resolve that urge too!