Olive Oil Cookies: Chocolate Chip Recipe, Variations and Shortbread
Olive oil cookies are what you get when the butter in a cookie dough is replaced by extra virgin olive oil: a cookie with crisp, caramelised edges, a soft and chewy middle, and a faint fruity, peppery note behind the chocolate or citrus. Below is our own chocolate chip olive oil cookie recipe, written from scratch for this article with metric and US measures side by side, followed by why the dough needs a short rest, which oil to choose, four variations, an egg-free olive oil shortbread, and how to convert a cookie recipe you already love. If you are baking something bigger, our olive oil cake, chocolate olive oil cake and olive oil brownies recipes cover those.
For our own oil, see our Cold-Pressed Single-Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil - Marrakech (500ml).
The Short Answer
- Yes, you can make cookies with olive oil. Extra virgin olive oil gives cookies crisp edges and chewy centres, and because it contains no water it keeps them soft for days.
- Our base recipe uses 120ml (½ cup) of extra virgin olive oil, 210g (1⅔ cups) of plain flour, brown and white sugar, one egg plus a yolk and 150g (5 oz) of dark chocolate, and makes about 18 cookies baked at 180°C / 160°C fan / 350°F for 10–12 minutes.
- The one step you cannot skip is resting the dough in the fridge for at least 30 minutes: warm olive oil dough is soft and glossy and spreads thin, while rested dough holds its shape.
- The cookies are dairy-free as written, with no butter or milk; they contain eggs and wheat. The olive oil shortbread further down is egg-free as well.
- To convert a butter cookie recipe, use roughly 75ml of olive oil for every 100g of butter, whisk the oil with the sugar instead of creaming, and chill the dough.
- Sidr & Stone's olive oil is a single-estate, cold-pressed, unfiltered extra virgin oil from our own farm on the plains outside Marrakech, Morocco, sold in 500ml dark glass.
Olive Oil Chocolate Chip Cookies: Ingredients (Metric and US)
This makes about 18 cookies of roughly 40g of dough each. Weighing gives the most reliable result. If you use cups, spoon the flour into the cup and level it off rather than scooping it from the bag, because packed flour is the most common reason a chewy cookie turns dry and cakey.
| Ingredient | Metric | US |
|---|---|---|
| Plain (all-purpose) flour | 210g | 1⅔ cups |
| Bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) | ½ tsp | ½ tsp |
| Fine salt | ½ tsp | ½ tsp |
| Light brown sugar | 150g | ⅔ cup, packed |
| Caster (superfine or granulated) sugar | 50g | ¼ cup |
| Extra virgin olive oil | 120ml | ½ cup |
| Large egg, room temperature | 1 | 1 |
| Large egg yolk | 1 | 1 |
| Alcohol-free vanilla paste (optional) | 1 tsp | 1 tsp |
| Dark chocolate (55–70% cocoa), chopped, or dark chocolate chips | 150g | 5 oz (about 1 cup chopped) |
| Flaky sea salt, to finish (optional) | a pinch | a pinch |
Equipment and oven: two large baking trays lined with baking paper, a mixing bowl and a whisk; no mixer needed. Oven at 180°C conventional, 160°C fan, 350°F, or gas mark 4.
The extra yolk is there for chew: it adds fat and emulsifiers without the extra water of a whole egg. We use vanilla paste labelled alcohol-free, or leave vanilla out, because standard vanilla extract is an alcohol-based ingredient — the US standard of identity for vanilla extract (21 CFR 169.175) requires an ethyl alcohol content of not less than 35% by volume. Many dark chocolates contain no milk, but some do and others carry a "may contain milk" warning, so check the label if you need the cookies dairy-free.
Method: How to Make Olive Oil Cookies, Step by Step
- Mix the dry ingredients. In a small bowl, whisk the flour, bicarbonate of soda and fine salt together and set aside.
- Whisk the sugars and oil. In a large bowl, whisk the brown sugar, caster sugar and olive oil together for about 30 seconds, breaking up any lumps of brown sugar. It will look wet and sandy.
- Emulsify with the eggs. Add the egg, the yolk and the vanilla, if using, and whisk hard for a full minute, until the mixture turns thick, glossy and caramel-coloured and the oil no longer pools at the edges. This is the step that stops the oil leaking out of the cookies later, so do not cut it short.
- Fold in the flour and chocolate. Tip in the dry ingredients and fold with a spatula until no streaks of flour remain, then fold in the chocolate. The dough will be soft and shiny; that is normal for an oil dough.
- Rest the dough. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or up to 24 hours. The dough firms up and turns from glossy to matte as the flour absorbs the liquid.
- Shape. Heat the oven. Roll the dough into balls of about 40g (a heaped 2 tablespoons) and set them 6cm (2½in) apart on the trays, nine to a tray. If you like, press a few extra pieces of chocolate on top.
- Bake. Bake one tray at a time for 10–12 minutes, until the edges are golden and set and the centres look puffed and still slightly underdone. Sprinkle with flaky salt as soon as they come out.
- Cool on the tray. Leave the cookies on the hot tray for 5 minutes, where they settle and finish cooking, then move them to a rack.
The "slightly underdone" cue matters: a cookie that looks fully baked in the centre when it leaves the oven will be crisp right through once it cools. If you prefer them that way, give them another two minutes. For the wider principles of working with oil in the oven, our guide to baking with olive oil sets them out.
Why Olive Oil Works in Cookies (and Why the Dough Must Rest)
Olive oil works in cookies because it does the two jobs a chewy cookie needs from its fat — tenderising the flour and carrying flavour — without bringing any water with it. Four things are going on:
- Oil is all fat; butter is not. US law defines butter as containing not less than 80% milk fat by weight (21 U.S.C. 321a), with most of the rest water. Oil adds no water, so less steam forms in the oven, the dough sets denser and chewier, and the sugar caramelises at the edges sooner.
- The fat stays soft when the cookies cool. Butter firms up again at room temperature, which is why butter cookies can turn hard by day two. Olive oil stays liquid, so oil cookies keep their soft middles longer.
- There is no creaming. Butter cookies get some of their lift from air beaten into butter and sugar. Liquid oil cannot hold air that way, so the egg-and-sugar emulsion in step 3 and the bicarbonate of soda do the work instead. That is why the whisking matters.
- Extra virgin adds flavour. Extra virgin is the only grade that is simply pressed fruit, never refined, so it is the only one that adds anything to the taste. Behind dark chocolate or brown sugar its fruity and peppery notes read as depth, the way a pinch of salt does, rather than as "olive".
The trade-off is that oil dough is soft. Straight after mixing, the oil sits on the surface of the flour and the dough is glossy and loose; bake it then and the cookies spread into thin, greasy discs. Resting gives the flour time to absorb the liquid and firms the dough in the fridge, so the cookies hold their shape and bake up thick. A longer rest, overnight, also deepens the toffee flavour of the brown sugar. For a fuller comparison of the two fats, including nutrition and where butter still wins, see our article on olive oil vs butter.
Which Olive Oil to Use for Cookies
Use an extra virgin olive oil you would happily taste on a spoon. The main thing to avoid is not a strong oil but a stale one: rancid oil smells of crayons, putty or old nuts, and baking concentrates that note rather than hiding it. Our guide to telling whether olive oil has gone off walks through the checks. Match the strength of the oil to the strength of the flavour around it.
| Oil style | In the cookie | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Delicate, ripe-fruity extra virgin | Buttery-tasting, olive notes barely noticeable | Lemon cookies, shortbread, first-time olive oil bakers |
| Medium, green-fruity extra virgin | The all-rounder: rounder chocolate, toffee-like sugar | Chocolate chip, oat and date, orange and pistachio |
| Robust, bitter and peppery extra virgin | A noticeable peppery finish | Double chocolate with flaky salt; less suited to delicate citrus |
| Refined, "pure" or "light" olive oil | Same texture, neutral taste | When you want a plain cookie with no olive character |
| Stale or rancid oil of any grade | Tastes stale; sugar does not hide it | Nothing; replace the bottle |
"Light" olive oil is a refined oil, not a lower-calorie one, as our article on what "light" olive oil means explains, and the tasting terms on labels — fruity, bitter, pungent — are covered in our piece on what "fruity" means in olive oil. When buying, look for a harvest or best-before date, dark glass or a tin, and a named origin, as set out in our guide to choosing a quality olive oil.
Olive Oil Cookie Variations: Lemon, Double Chocolate, Oat and Date, Orange and Pistachio
Each variation starts from the base dough above and changes only what is listed, so the method, the rest and the baking time stay the same.
Lemon olive oil cookies
Leave out the chocolate. Rub the finely grated zest of two unwaxed lemons into the sugars with your fingertips before adding the oil, so the zest releases its oil into the sugar. Roll the rested dough balls in 3 tablespoons of caster sugar before baking. For a glaze, stir 60g (½ cup) of icing (powdered) sugar with about 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and drizzle over the cooled cookies. A delicate oil suits this one best.
Double chocolate olive oil cookies
Replace 30g (¼ cup) of the flour with 30g (⅓ cup) of cocoa powder, and keep the full 150g (5 oz) of chopped dark chocolate. Bake for 10–11 minutes; the darker dough makes doneness harder to judge, so go by set edges and a puffed centre. This is the place for a robust, peppery oil and a good pinch of flaky salt.
Oat and date olive oil cookies
Replace 60g (½ cup) of the flour with 60g (⅔ cup) of rolled oats, add ½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon to the dry ingredients, and swap the chocolate for 120g (¾ cup) of chopped pitted dates. Medjool dates give a softer, more toffee-like result; drier dates give a chewier one.
Orange and pistachio olive oil cookies
Rub the zest of one orange into the sugars, reduce the chocolate to 100g (3½ oz), and fold in 60g (½ cup) of roughly chopped shelled pistachios. Orange and olive oil is a pairing with a long history in Mediterranean baking: the Greek melomakarona eaten at Christmas are made mainly from flour, olive oil and honey, flavoured with orange, cinnamon and clove, and finished with walnuts.
Olive Oil Biscuits and Shortbread: An Egg-Free Recipe
If you searched for olive oil biscuits or olive oil shortbread, this is the recipe: crisp, sandy, egg-free and dairy-free, and easier than the cookies because the dough is pressed into a tin. It makes 12 fingers or wedges.
| Ingredient | Metric | US |
|---|---|---|
| Plain (all-purpose) flour | 200g | 1½ cups + 2 tbsp |
| Cornflour (cornstarch) | 25g | 3 tbsp |
| Caster (superfine) sugar | 65g | ⅓ cup |
| Fine salt | ¼ tsp | ¼ tsp |
| Finely grated lemon or orange zest (optional) | 1 fruit | 1 fruit |
| Extra virgin olive oil | 100ml | ⅓ cup + 4 tsp |
| Cold water, if needed | 1–2 tsp | 1–2 tsp |
| Demerara (turbinado) sugar, to sprinkle | 1 tbsp | 1 tbsp |
- Mix. Whisk the flour, cornflour, sugar, salt and zest in a bowl. Drizzle in the oil and rub it through with your fingertips until the mixture looks like damp sand and holds together when you squeeze a handful. If it crumbles apart, add cold water a teaspoon at a time.
- Press. Press the mixture firmly and evenly into a 20cm (8in) round or square tin lined with baking paper. Smooth it with the back of a spoon, prick all over with a fork, mark 12 portions with a knife and sprinkle with the demerara sugar. Chill for 20 minutes while the oven heats.
- Bake. Bake at 160°C / 140°C fan / 325°F / gas mark 3 for 30–35 minutes, until pale gold at the edges and firm in the middle.
- Cut warm. Re-cut along the marks while it is still warm, then leave it to cool completely in the tin before lifting out; it is fragile until cold.
An honest note: this is not butter shortbread with a different fat. Classic shortbread relies on solid butter for its dense, melting snap, which is why our baking guide says butter still wins for it. The olive oil version is a different biscuit — lighter, sandier and more crumbly, closer to the oil-based biscuits found around the Mediterranean — and it is very good on its own terms, especially with citrus zest and a delicate oil.
Using Olive Oil in Your Own Cookie Recipe
You do not have to use our recipes to bake with olive oil. Most drop cookies convert well; the rule depends on what the recipe started with.
- If the recipe uses butter: use roughly 75ml of olive oil for every 100g of butter — about 6 tablespoons (85ml) for each US stick (113g) — because butter is part water and oil is all fat. Instead of creaming butter and sugar, whisk the oil, sugar and eggs together hard until glossy, then fold in the dry ingredients.
- Always chill the converted dough for at least 30 minutes. Recipes written for butter assume a firm dough; an oil dough baked warm will spread much further.
- If the recipe uses vegetable, sunflower or rapeseed (canola) oil: replace it one for one with olive oil. Both are liquid fats and behave the same way in the oven; our comparison of olive oil vs vegetable oil explains what differs in the bottle.
- Expect a different cookie: crisper at the edge, chewier in the middle and a little flatter than a butter cookie. Rolled sugar cookies for cutting into shapes and classic butter shortbread are the two styles that do not convert well.
Troubleshooting Olive Oil Cookies
They spread into thin, greasy discs
The dough was too warm or not rested, or the eggs were not whisked long enough to bind the oil. Chill the dough for longer, keep unbaked dough balls in the fridge between trays, and make sure the egg mixture is thick and glossy before the flour goes in.
Oil seeped out of the dough or the cookies look shiny and wet
The emulsion broke. Whisk the sugars, oil and eggs for the full minute, and do not add the oil to very hot or very cold ingredients; room-temperature eggs bind best.
They came out dry and cakey
Too much flour (scooped cups are the usual culprit) or a few minutes too long in the oven. Weigh the flour and take the cookies out while the centres still look slightly underdone.
They taste too strongly of olive oil
A robust, peppery oil can be loud in a plain or lemon cookie. Use a delicate or medium extra virgin for those, and keep the robust oils for chocolate.
Storing and Freezing Olive Oil Cookies
Keep the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for four to five days; because the oil stays liquid, the centres stay soft. The shortbread keeps for about a week in a tin. Unbaked dough balls freeze well for up to three months: freeze them on a tray, then bag them, and bake straight from frozen, adding one to two minutes to the baking time. A few drops of extra virgin olive oil and a pinch of flaky salt over a warm chocolate cookie sounds unusual and works very well.
Why Sidr & Stone
In an olive oil cookie, the oil is the ingredient that decides whether the cookie tastes of brown sugar and chocolate alone or of something more, and it is the one ingredient we can speak for. Sidr & Stone's extra virgin olive oil comes from one place, our own farm on the plains outside Marrakech, and we control every step from tree to bottle.
- Single-estate: Sidr & Stone's olive oil comes from our own family-owned farm near Marrakech, Morocco, with no blending across origins.
- Rain-fed: the trees are not irrigated; they take what the season gives.
- Organically grown: no synthetic fertilisers, pesticides or herbicides are used (not yet certified; certification is in progress).
- Single harvest: each batch is small and limited, picked when the fruit is ready; once it is gone, it is gone until the next harvest.
- Cold-pressed within hours of harvest: to protect flavour, aroma and polyphenols.
- Unfiltered extra virgin: minimally processed, so a little natural sediment at the bottom of the bottle is normal.
- 100% natural: a single ingredient, olive oil, with nothing added.
- Dark glass with a gold label: 500ml bottles that protect the oil from light.
- 10% of profits to charity: a Sidr & Stone commitment across every product.
- Fulfilment in the UK, EU and US.
We will not tell you ours is the best olive oil for cookies; the baking tray will be the judge of that. What we will say is that it is single-estate Moroccan, rain-fed, organically grown and cold-pressed within hours of harvest, and that the product page carries the details of the current batch, so you can check its freshness for yourself.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you use olive oil in cookies?
Yes. Olive oil works in most drop cookies and gives crisp edges, chewy centres and cookies that stay soft for days. Use roughly 75ml for every 100g of butter, whisk it with the sugar and eggs instead of creaming, and chill the dough before baking.
Why do olive oil cookies need to be chilled?
Freshly mixed oil dough is soft and glossy because the oil has not yet been absorbed by the flour. Thirty minutes or more in the fridge firms it and lets the flour hydrate, so the cookies hold their shape instead of spreading thin.
Do olive oil cookies taste of olive oil?
Behind chocolate, brown sugar or orange, a medium extra virgin reads as a rounder, deeper flavour rather than as olives. In plain or lemon cookies a delicate oil is barely noticeable; a robust, peppery oil will show through.
Can I make olive oil shortbread or biscuits without eggs?
Yes. Our olive oil shortbread uses flour, cornflour, sugar, salt and olive oil only, pressed into a tin. It is sandier and more crumbly than butter shortbread — a different biscuit rather than a copy.
Is Sidr & Stone's olive oil good for baking cookies?
It is a fresh, unfiltered, single-estate extra virgin olive oil, cold-pressed within hours of harvest, which is the kind of oil a cookie rewards. Taste it on a spoon first and decide whether you want it in the dough, as a finishing drizzle, or both.
Are olive oil cookies dairy-free?
Our recipes contain no butter or milk. Check that your chocolate contains no milk, since some dark chocolates do. The cookies contain eggs and wheat; the shortbread contains wheat but no eggs.
Where can I buy single-estate extra virgin olive oil for baking?
Our Cold-Pressed Single-Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil - Marrakech (500ml) is available directly from the Sidr & Stone website, with fulfilment in the UK, EU and US.
Is olive oil a medicine?
No. Olive oil is a food, not a medicine. It has a long traditional history — including being honoured in the Prophetic Sunnah — and a substantial body of modern research, particularly around polyphenols, cardiovascular health, and the Mediterranean diet pattern. It can be a worthwhile part of a healthy routine, but it does not cure diseases and is not a substitute for medical care. Be cautious of any olive oil marketed with specific disease-cure claims.
Final Thoughts
Olive oil cookies are not a substitute you settle for when the butter runs out. Made with a good extra virgin and given a proper rest in the fridge, they bake up with crisp, caramelised edges and chewy centres that stay soft for days, and one bowl and a whisk is all the equipment they need. Start with the chocolate chip dough, then let the variations and the shortbread take it wherever you like.
Because the oil is a main ingredient, it is worth using one you enjoy tasting on its own: fresh, extra virgin, with a clear origin. Our Cold-Pressed Single-Estate Extra Virgin Olive Oil - Marrakech (500ml), single-estate, rain-fed and cold-pressed within hours of harvest, is available to pre-order now, with fulfilment in the UK, EU and US.
Our extra virgin olive oil is grown organically on our own single-estate farm on the plains outside Marrakech: we control every step from tree to bottle, and no synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fertilisers are used. It is not yet certified organic — certification is in progress, and we will publish it as soon as it comes through.
Disclaimer: This article shares home-baking recipes and general cooking information at the time of writing; ovens, ingredients and individual dietary needs vary. The cookies contain eggs and wheat, the shortbread contains wheat, the pistachio variation contains nuts, and chocolate may contain milk or traces of other allergens, so check labels. Olive oil is a food, not a medicine, and is not a substitute for medical treatment of any condition. For any health concern, consult a qualified medical professional.