19 Easy, One-Bowl Cookies for a Simply Sweet Season

If you have a hankering for a treat but don’t have time for the cleanup, these recipes are for you.

Sometimes you want a baking project to last all day, while other times you just need to satisfy a craving — and quick. Or maybe you just found out about tomorrow’s school bake sale, um, tonight. These sweets require only one bowl for assembly, one vessel for baking and a reasonable number of ingredients. But wait, there’s more! Most come together in well under an hour, so you can get to the most important part: eating.

1. Lemon-Turmeric Crinkle Cookies

“I cooked these like six times last year, and I plan to do it again this year,” one reader wrote about these crackly little sunset delights from Eric Kim. They get earthiness from turmeric and brightness from lemon zest.

Recipe: Lemon-Turmeric Crinkle Cookies

2. Chocolate-Cherry Ginger Cookies

These chewy spiced cookies from Yossy Arefi are punctuated with tart dried cherries and puddles of milk chocolate. Rolling them in turbinado sugar before baking gives them a sparkly, crunchy bite.

Recipe: Chocolate Cherry Ginger Cookies

3. Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie

When you want something sweet without a lot of fuss, make Samantha Seneviratne’s giant skillet cookie. Serve it in the skillet with a few scoops of ice cream on top, give everyone a spoon and go to town.

Recipe: Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie

4. Sugared Shortbread

One of my all-time favorite cookie recipes we have is this five-ingredient shortbread from Amy Casey, who submitted it when The Times requested readers’ favorite cookie recipes in 2012. It’s sandy, tender and just sweet enough.

Recipe: Sugared Shortbread

5. Peanut-Butter Chocolate-Chip Cookies

These vegan cookies from Yossy Arefi get their tender chewiness from banana and peanut butter. They’re the perfect treat for those with a not-too-sweet tooth.

Recipe: Peanut-Butter Chocolate-Chip Cookies

6. Skillet Sprinkle Sugar Cookie

A sprinkle cookie is always fun, and this large-format version from Jessie Sheehan is extra fun. The ingredient list is short, so use the best butter and vanilla extract you can get your hands on for the most delicious results.

Recipe: Skillet Sprinkle Sugar Cookie

7. Nutella Brownies

OK, you’re right. These are not cookies. But with just three ingredients — Nutella, eggs and flour — we thought you deserved to hear about them anyway. Like their cookie cousins, they’re also great dunked in milk.

Recipe: Nutella Brownies

8. Chocolate Chip-Tahini Skillet Cookie

Skillet cookies forever! This one, from Carolina Gelen, is made with brown butter and tahini for extra nuttiness. While baking, the cookie will develop two separate layers: a crispy, crackly cookie top, and a soft, gooey, half-baked bottom. Yes, please.

Recipe: Chocolate Chip Tahini Skillet Cookie

9. Lemon Meltaways

Yossy Arefi’s tangy, melt-in-your-mouth cookies are perfect for the lemon lover in your life. (Maybe that’s you!) Tightly wrap half of the dough, and freeze it for later.

Recipe: Lemon Meltaways

10. M&M Cookies

With colorful candies sprinkled throughout the dough, these chewy cookies from Eric Kim can brighten the dreariest of days. The secret is to chop the M&Ms so that the chocolate and candy shells are evenly distributed.

Recipe: M&M Cookies

11. Shortbread Jammers

If you were lucky enough to get your hands one of those much ballyhooed Bonne Maman advent calendars this year, chances are you have a little extra jam hanging around. Here’s a suggestion: Make this simple recipe that The Times adapted from “The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion.” Shortbread, spread with good jam and then topped with shortbread crumbs, sure beats more toast.

Recipe: Shortbread Jammers

12. No-Bake Cookies

These achingly sweet-in-a-good-way chocolate-peanut-butter treats are a cinch to put together. Just combine everything in a pot over medium heat and then drop spoonfuls onto a sheet pan and chill until set.

Recipe: No-Bake Cookies

13. Torticas de Morón

Krysten Chambrot developed a version of these “delightfully sandy” cookies that originated in central Cuba. They call for just six ingredients: flour, shortening, sugar, lime zest, salt and vanilla. Smear one with a little dulce de leche or guava paste if you’re feeling festive.

Recipe: Torticas de Morón

14. Caramelized Brown Butter Rice Krispies Treats

Julia Moskin adapted this recipe from Colin Alevras, then the chef at the Tasting Room in New York, which offered Rice Krispies treats every day until it closed in 2008 (seems like a noble pursuit to us.). Basic Rice Krispies treats are always good, but browning the butter takes these to the next level.

Recipe: Caramelized Brown Butter Rice Krispies Treats

15. Almendrados (Almond-Lemon Macaroons)

Toss all the ingredients — almonds, sugar, egg and the zest of a lemon — into the bowl of a food processor, blitz until a smooth dough forms and then chill. Pinch off bits of dough, roll into balls, top with an almond and bake. Ta-da! You have these lemony-bright, gluten-free delights. Joan Nathan adapted this version from the cookbook author Ana Benarroch de Bensadón.

Recipe: Almendrados (Almond-Lemon Macaroons)

16. Rose and Almond Ghriba

Ghriba is a crackly chewy cookie that is popular in Morocco. Flavors and recipes vary depending on the region or family, but here, Nargisse Benkabbou makes them with rose water and ground almonds. Sticklers will point out that, technically, this isn’t a one-bowl recipe — it calls for an additional small vessel to hold the confectioners’ sugar for rolling — but we think it’s good enough to merit looking the other way.

Recipe: Rose and Almond Ghriba

17. Banana Everything Cookies

This recipe exists so that the overripe banana on your counter doesn’t languish, alone and dreams unfulfilled, in your compost bin. Adapted from the cookbook “Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar” by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, they are chock-full of oats, walnuts and chocolate chips.

Recipe: Banana Everything Cookies

18. Salted Pistachio Shortbread

Alison Roman’s salty-sweet-nutty shortbread is made completely in a food processor, so it’s done in a jiffy. The green-hued pistachios give the triangle cookies a Christmas tree vibe, but substitute walnuts, pecans or hazelnuts if you like.

Recipe: Salted Pistachio Shortbread

19. Brown-Edge Cookies

These unassuming little wafers are the Walt Whitman of cookies: They contain multitudes. At once buttery, crispy, delicate and chewy, they go with everything, but shine brightest on their own. Putting them together is as simple as whipping butter, sugar, egg, vanilla and salt into a creamy frenzy, dropping spoonfuls onto a sheet pan and then baking until the edges — you guessed it — brown.

Recipe: Brown-Edge Cookies

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