That’s why I’m SO thrilled to be sharing this recipe for Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies with you today. In my opinion, it’s the perfect easy everyday chocolate chip cookie recipe. This homemade recipe is simple to make, and yields thick, beautiful cookies that are golden brown, crisp at the edges, and gooey at the center.
Watch the video below to step into my kitchen and see exactly how to bake these delicious cookies with me. I give tons of tips and tricks for getting perfectly thick cookies with chocolate chunks, and you can see what every step of this recipe should look like!
How to Make The Best Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies
How to make soft chocolate chip cookies:
The key to the best soft cookies is to take the chocolate chip cookies out of the oven just before they look like they’re done baking. They should still appear slightly wet in the very center. The residual heat of the oven and pan will finish cooking the cookies through to soft perfection once you allow them to cool completely.
Also, be sure to measure your flour correctly. Too much flour will lead to dry, dense, or crumbly chocolate chip cookies that barely spread. Check out my article on How to Measure Flour here, it’ll forever improve your baking!
Why are my chocolate chip cookies flat?
When making cookies, be sure your butter is at a cool room temperature before beating with your sugar. It shouldn’t be greasy or overly soft otherwise it’ll melt and spread the cookies too much.
The warmer your chocolate chip cookie dough is when it enters the oven, the thinner and flatter your cookies will be. To prevent flat cookies, try freezing your balls of cookie dough while your oven preheats. Learn more about how to bake THICK cookies here.
Better yet, refrigerate your chocolate chip cookie dough for 24 to 48 hours. This ‘marination’ process will transform your chocolate chip cookies by making them thicker, chewier, and more flavorful! Plus, this is a perfect way to make your delicious cookies ahead of time. Read more about the magic of chilling your cookie dough here. NOTE: chilling is OPTIONAL for this recipe but using chilled dough will enhance your cookies!
How to make chewy chocolate chip cookies:
One of the keys to CHEWY chocolate chip cookies is to use more brown sugar than granulated sugar. The molasses in the brown sugar draws in more moisture, making the cookies thicker, softer, and chewier.
For extra chewy cookies, try adding an extra egg yolk to this recipe. You can also replace half or all of the all-purpose flour in this recipe with bread flour for an ultra chewy bite.
How to bake chocolate chip cookies:
For the BEST chocolate chip cookies, make the recipe below keeping these top tips in mind:
- Use a kitchen scale to measure your ingredients for the BEST most consistent results
- Make the recipe exactly as written, without substitutions, at least the first time you bake it
Use the correct baking pan and a spring-loaded cookie scoop or even an ice cream scoop for bakery quality cookies at home.
What’s the difference between baking soda and baking powder?
Baking powder and baking soda are both chemical leaveners that work to create light textures in baked goods.
Although baking powder actually contains baking soda, the two leaveners are very different. Baking powder and baking soda are not interchangeable – just take a look at the impact the type of leavener used had on each of the cookies below!
Find out more in my Baking Soda vs. Baking Powder article here.
Which baking pan is best for cookies?
Take a look at the chocolate chip cookies below. These cookies are all the same batch of cookie dough, baked at the same temperature of 350°F, baked for the same amount of time of 12 minutes. The only difference? The type of baking pan used!
Check out my Best (and WORST) Baking Pans article here for more details on the science of baking pans.
How to Keep Chocolate Chip Cookies Fresh
The best cookies are the freshest, there’s no magical way around that. However, here’s a few tricks to keeping them fresh and soft for as long as possible!
Can you freeze chocolate chip cookies?
I love the taste of cookies straight from the oven the best. I always keep pre-scooped balls of chocolate chip cookie dough in a resealable bag in my freezer so I can bake cookies off and have them warm from the oven in a matter of minutes whenever I want. Here are more tips for freezing cookie dough.
But for those times when you need to keep already baked cookies soft, these are my tips. First of all, most cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temp for up to 5 days. Be sure they are completely cooled before storing.
How to keep cookies soft:
To keep your baked chocolate chip cookies soft, you can add an apple wedge, piece of bread, or a tortilla on the top and bottom of the cookies to the container a day or two after baking them, or whenever you find the texture starting to harden. The moisture from the bread or apple will migrate to your cookies, making them soft and chewy again.
A tortilla is a new favorite of mine because it takes up much less room than a slice of bread, and doesn’t transfer any flavors or aromas like an apple wedge. Not to mention it fits into a round cookie tin pretty perfectly.
How to refresh stored cookies:
What I like to do is reheat and refresh the cookies in a 350°F oven for 3-5 minutes. Your toaster oven should work just fine. This improves the texture and there’s nothing like a warm chocolate chip cookie!
So many other cookie recipes don’t work as well because you can’t use a food scale to measure it exactly, so not only did this recipe make it easier to measure it perfectly, it also came out perfect. The perfect crisp outside to chewy inside texture and the delicious flavor, better than any bakery cookie I’ve ever had. 10 out of 10, this will be my go to recipe for chocolate chip cookies.
These were great! I used a massive cookie scoop and made two about the size of the palm of my hand. I definitely had to bake them for longer because of this, which isn’t surprising. They look like bakery cookies! The rest of the dough is in the refrigerator for later! I was surprised how well these turned out without refrigeration, and am excited to see how they’ll be after they rest.
These look amazing!! Could we use melted butter? I would of course still chill the dough overnight (I’ve learned the hard way that makes a difference).
Hi Dinar! We are looking for a cool room temperature butter for this recipe, around 67°F for best results. Tessa details why in the pink box above the recipe 🙂
These are the best Chocolate Chip cookies I’ve ever made. You are a baking genius. I do have one question. Is your basic cookie recipe good for making White Chocolate Macadamia nut cookies. And if so what amount of white chips and macadamia nuts should I add.
Thanks, Linda Butler
Hi Linda! Feel free to swap the chocolate chips for 1 cup nuts + 1 cup white chips! So happy you love this recipe!
This is the best cookie recipe and the only one I make now. I freeze unbaked dough in balls and have freshly baked cookies right out of the freezer whenever I want!
This is so wonderful to hear!
Can this recipe be doubled?
Absolutely!