Tessa’s Recipe Rundown
Taste: Full of sweet butterscotch & chocolate flavors, exactly how a chocolate chip cookie should taste!
Texture: Thick and chock full of gooey chocolate with slightly crisp edges.
Ease: No special ingredients, equipment, or skills needed!
Pros: Easy everyday delightful chocolate chip cookie recipe. I think you’ll love this one.
Cons: None.
Would I make this again? I’ve already made this recipe many times and have the dough in my freezer for when the craving strikes.
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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.
The Ultimate Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies is still one of my most popular posts, visited by over two million people.
That post inspired the creation of my second cookbook, The Ultimate Cookie Handbook. And since THOUSANDS of you have purchased that cookbook, I think it’s clear that we’re all obsessed with cookies here.
That’s why I’m SO thrilled to share this Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe 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 golden brown cookies, 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!
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There’s actually a time-lapse video shot of these cookies cooling right after I took them out of the oven. You can see that they hardly shrink or deflate as they cool. If you only beat the butter and sugar for 2 to 3 minutes max, your cookies shouldn’t deflate!
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!
Tessa’s Favorite Tools for This Recipe
- Large 3-tablespoon size cookie scoop for that bakery-style texture
- Or use a medium 1.5-tablespoon size cookie scoop and bake only for about 10-12 minutes instead
- Nordic Ware Natural Aluminum Baker’s Half Sheet won our side-by-side comparison of the best baking pans
- 12″x16″ non-stick parchment paper for the best bake and easiest cleanup!
- The Ultimate Cookie Handbook: Your Guide to Baking Perfect Cookies Every Time by Tessa Arias
More Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipes
- Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies (these are CHEWIER than this recipe)
- Coconut Oil Chocolate Chip Cookies (dairy free)
- Browned Butter Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies (ultra flavorful!)
- Giant Reese’s Pieces Chocolate Chip Cookies (thick and delicious!)
- Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (for serious PB lovers only!)
See ALL of my types of cookie recipes & cookie baking tips here!
Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 3 cups (380 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 2 sticks (227 grams) unsalted butter, at cool room temperature (67°F)
- 1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
- 1 1/4 cups (247 grams) lightly packed light brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 2 cups (340 grams) semisweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350ºF. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar until creamy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl. Add the vanilla and eggs and beat until combined, scraping the bowl down as needed. Gradually beat in the flour mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips.
- If time permits, wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 24 hours but no more than 72 hours. This allows the dough to “marinate” and makes the cookies thicker, chewier, and more flavorful. Let dough sit at room temperature just until it is soft enough to scoop.
- Divide the dough into 3-tablespoon sized balls using a large cookie scoop and drop onto prepared baking sheets.
- Bake for 11-13 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool for 5 minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely.
- Although I prefer cookies fresh from the oven, these can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days. See post for storage tips.
Photos by Jess Larson.
BAKERY STYLE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES MADE BY OUR COMMUNITY
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its perfect
Hi! I was wondering if you can double or triple this recipe? Is there any reason why I can’t. Thank you very much.
Hi Deb! Yes, feel free to double or triple the recipe – just be sure you’re using a large enough bowl so that everything still gets incorporated properly. Let us know what you think of these cookies once you have given them a try 🙂
Made the chocolate chip cookies there out of this world making another batch tomorrow
So glad to hear that, Jim!
These chocolate chip cookies turned out absolutely perfect! Might be the best recipe I’ve ever found!
So, so yummy! I did this without refrigerating overnight. Instead, I put the dough in the freezer while I cleaned up and pre-heated the oven. They still came out so yummy, ooey gooey, and fluffy! This is everything I wanted in a chocolate chip cookie. Crisp edges and soft, gooey center.
Thank you so much for this! I will be bookmarking and using this recipe for years to come.
yes girl, these be so good! 🙂 luvs it every time… hope you continue to slay the day away mamas
Is there any reason why I can’t shape the dough into balls right away and then refrigerate them? That seems like it would be easier than trying to shape the balls with the very cold dough. Anyone try it this way?
Hi Deb! Feel free to shape the dough into balls before refrigerating – just be sure to cover them well with plastic wrap or place them inside an airtight container, so they don’t dry out in the fridge. Let us know what you think of these cookies once you have given them a try 🙂
Hi! I’m so Bless and thankful to find this recipe, because there are so much Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe but they don’t turn out right. This recipe was absolutely exquisite, it came out so good I started crying lol it was absolutely delicious and I was absolutely pleased and grateful. my Husband and I enjoyed it, so what I did I doubled the recipe in order to have enough for our family members. With the use of both white sugar and brown sugar was an amazing idea because it wasn’t too sweet, it balanced out very well. You were absolutely right, after I made the dough and placed it in the refrigerator for 24 hours then I left it out to thaw for about 5 hours before baking them, and I was absolutely amazed, they came out nice and thick, really chewy and absolutely flavorful, but since I doubled the recipe and with the chill time, the timing was a bit more instead of 13 minutes it was about 26 minutes. Thank you very much God Bless.
As someone who has gone through a LOT of cookie recipes- the recipes I find here always come out looking picture perfect.
My only con was a personal preference- there were a LOT of chocolate chips. When the cookies were completely cool, some bites were like chomping down on a bar of semisweet chocolate. I’ll probably cut it back to 1 – 1 1/2 cups next time.
Delicious! These were great! I made them with my sister today and they turned out good. Planning on bringing them to bible study tonight to share 🙂
Hi!
I’ve followed the recipe exactly, but the cookies came out with a pool of oil/grease in the middle and the flour doesn’t seem to have “bloomed” even after the 24 hour marination stage. Any help here?
Thank you!
Hi Bryana! I’m sorry to hear that these cookies didn’t turn out as they should! Without having baked alongside you, it’s difficult to say exactly what went wrong here – but here are a few of the possible culprits:
– Were any ingredients substituted, reduced, or removed? Even seemingly small changes can mess with a recipe’s chemistry, resulting in cookie issues.
– How do you measure your ingredients? By volume (using cups), or by weight (using a digital kitchen scale)? When measuring by volume, it’s so easy to mis-measure ingredients (particularly flour) and throw off the chemistry of a recipe – resulting in sad puddle cookies, cookies that don’t spread, and more. Check out Tessa’s article here, where she talks about how to best measure ingredients to ensure accuracy every time.
– How old is your baking soda? If your leavening agents are not fresh, they won’t be able to do their jobs. Baking powder/soda can lose their effectiveness long before the expiration date on the packaging. Tessa talks about the science behind leavening agents, and how to test for leavener freshness, in this article here!
– Another thing could be how long you creamed your butter and sugars together for, and how warm your butter was at this time. Both have a huge impact on a cookie’s outcome. Tessa talks about the butter temp more in the tip box, above the recipe – but this article goes into more detail. Both the butter’s temp, and how long it was creamed with the sugar, have a bigger impact on a cookie’s outcome than you might think!
– What type of pan are you baking on? Different pans conduct heat differently and conduct heat less efficiently. Tessa shows the differences between a variety of baking pans in this article here! Also, always be sure to bake on pans that are totally cool; baking on warm pans will cause your butter to melt faster and your cookies to spread more. Never grease your pans, either; a piece of parchment paper is best – and it also requires less cleanup, so it’s a win-win!
I hope something here helps, Bryana, and I hope you give these cookies another try! They really are amazing 🙂 Happy baking!
If I make these smaller, will they still be chewy and how long would you suggest I bake them using a smaller scoop?
Hi Kim! Larger cookies tend to be chewier, which is why Tessa typically opts for the 3-Tablespoon size for most of her cookie recipes! Feel free to experiment with smaller sizes – 1.5-tablespoon-sized cookies will need about 10-12 minutes in the oven. I hope that helps! Let us know what you think of these cookies once you have given them a try 🙂
Will they still turn out good if I cut the recipe in half?
Yes, that should work just fine 🙂