My favorite type of recipe to bake is absolutely COOKIES. They’re so fun and simple and can teach us SO much about the science of baking.
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!
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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, measure your flour correctly to improve your baking forever. Too much flour will lead to dry, dense, or crumbly chocolate chip cookies that barely spread.
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 for bakery-quality cookies at home. More on that below!
Why use a cookie scoop?
Using a stainless steel spring-loaded cookie scoop when portioning out cookie dough is one of the KEYS to beautiful, uniform, evenly-shaped and evenly-baked cookies. My cookie scoop is one of my most frequently used kitchen gadgets. A spring-loaded scoop saves you *so much time* in forming the balls of dough. When using a scoop, you ensure each ball is evenly sized so the cookies bake evenly, meaning you don’t have any small overbaked cookies or large underbaked cookies. Learn more about Cookie Scoops and how to use them here!
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 are 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, see below for 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 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!
We love this recipe. My mom and I have been baking different cookies all week long. After I made these we have stuck to this recipe. the one cookies we couldn’t get to like was oatmeal raisin. so I put cinnamon in this recipe with oats and raisins. let me tell you. they are the best oatmeal cookie I’ve had in a long while. highly recommend trying!
Woohoo! So glad this recipe + your other variations were a hit, Shaina!
Hi Tessa, love the video, will be making these delicious chocolate chip cookies for Christmas for my family.
This is the best chocolate chip cookie! My family agreed. Thank you so much for sharing.
I have made this recipe twice and I have to say they were awesome. Great job.
I’ve been making these for over a year, and they are liked so much by all, I 1.5x all the ingredients (except the salt, which I left unchanged, and the chocolate chips, which I 1.18x (400g)). I do all my measurements in grams (besides vanilla extract, bicarbonate of soda, salt, and eggs). I find it easiest to make into balls for cooking after putting the mix in the fridge for a while, as it’s normally soft. Also, for the chocolate chips, I like to a 100g pack of milk and dark chips, and 2 100g packs of white. I can also report that they taste lovely even with cheap baking block (margarine) instead of proper unsalted butter, although I have never tried it with the latter.
Also, quick question, in the main page (https://handletheheat.com/bakery-style-chocolate-chip-cookies/), it seems to imply you *should* use both baking powder and bicarbonate of soda, but the recipe only tells you to use the soda. Why?
Hi Nat! So glad to hear that you enjoy this recipe so much! Baking soda was Tessa’s preference in leavening agent when she was developing this particular recipe – learn more about Baking Soda vs. Baking Powder in Tessa’s article here. I hope that helps! Happy baking 🙂
This is by far the BEST chocolate cookie recipe I have ever used. I’ve been baking more than 40 years and this is the only one I will use from now on. My son texted me this afternoon asking for the recipe. He’s never done that before. This is a keeper for sure. Do not skip the refrigeration part. It makes all the difference!! Five stars ⭐️ if I could give six I would!!
I made dark, milk and white chocolate chip cookies from one batch of these cookies. They were definitely delicious and they won me a prize in a local baking competition!
Excellent recipe, thank you
Amazing cookies! These are everything you want in a chocolate chip cookie, loaded with chocolate chips, crispy outside and soft inside. Will definitely make these again!
I have been looking for the ultimate chocolate chip cookie recipe, I think I may have found it!