Tessa's Recipe Rundown
Taste: Tons of sweet vanilla and butterscotch flavor with the right amount of chocolate chips.
Texture: Thick and chewy, with slightly crisp edges, and plenty of gooey chocolate chips.
Ease: Simple 30-minute recipe.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe: These are my go-to Chocolate Chip Cookies — I’ve made this recipe hundreds of times! I always have this dough in my freezer, ready to bake off whenever the craving strikes.
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My Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies are thick, chewy, and gooey. If there’s one thing I’m passionate about, it’s chocolate chip cookies.
You might think me a little unhinged, but I’ve tested this particular recipe over 20 times, with nearly every variation you could think of, to deliver you the superlative chocolate chip cookie!
All that hard work paid off because this is now one of the MOST popular recipes on my site, with over seven million visitors and 1,000 5-star reviews.
Reader Love
I’ve been baking for 50 years and this is the best chocolate chip cookie ever. I love it so much I always have dough balls in freezer ready to bake. Thank you so much for sharing!
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Reader Love
Everyone’s favorite cookie recipe! Everytime I make this recipe it’s guaranteed everyone will ask for it. Easy and great to keep in the freezer!
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Why is this the BEST Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe?
My recipe is simple enough to make on a weeknight, with no fancy ingredients. It’s been meticulously tested and the result is beautiful golden brown cookies, crisp at the edges and a little gooey at the center.
I’ve even made these cookies on The Today Show!
Important Ingredient Notes
Understanding how and why basic baking ingredients work can make you feel like a pro in the kitchen. I chose each ingredient only after careful testing so each one truly does matter.
All-Purpose Flour (measured correctly): I highly recommend using a digital kitchen scale to weigh your flour, or using the spoon-and-level method. It’s shockingly easy to accidentally add too much flour when measuring with cups, which can result in cookies that won’t spread, turn cakey, or go dry.
Baking Soda: After intensive testing, I chose to use only baking soda for leavening in this recipe, which resulted in perfectly golden brown cookies with just enough spread to bake evenly.
Salt: Don’t skip this! Once, my husband forgot the salt in this recipe and I realized it immediately after the first bland, underwhelming bite. I prefer fine sea salt for the taste, but you can also use table salt. Avoid Kosher salt, which doesn’t disperse evenly into the dough. I’ll even sprinkle these cookies with flaky sea salt when they come out of the oven for a salty-sweet bite.
Butter: I prefer to use unsalted butter in my baking because it’s typically fresher than salted butter (salt is a preservative) and it gives me full control of the salt content. If all you have is salted, no worries. Simply cut the salt in half (½ teaspoon) in this recipe.
White Sugar: Also called granulated sugar, this encourages more spread so I only use a small amount.
Brown Sugar: Brown sugar contains molasses, which helps contribute that beloved butterscotch flavor associated with chocolate chip cookies. That molasses draws in more moisture, making for thicker, softer, and chewier cookies that stay good for longer.
Eggs: Essential for binding together the cookie dough, eggs also add extra protein and fat for added richness and structure. Substitute the eggs with 50 grams of plain, unflavored, unsweetened yogurt if needed.
Vanilla: Again, don’t skip this ingredient! It imparts a sweet aroma that tells our brain something amazing is about to happen. Cookies without vanilla can fall flat.
Chocolate Chips: I prefer semisweet chocolate chips (Ghirardelli or Guittard are my favorite) because they have the perfect sweetness to balance out the other flavors of the cookies. If you prefer milk or bittersweet chocolate instead, feel free to use either.
- If you prefer fewer chocolate chips, decrease the amount to 1 ½ cups, just note your cookies may turn out slightly thinner. If you prefer chocolate chunks, swap in the same amount!
How to Make Chocolate Chip Cookies (Step-by-Step)
Whisk together the dry ingredients. This helps to evenly disperse the salt and baking soda.
Add the butter. Make sure it’s at a cool room temperature (about 67°F) to avoid flat cookies. You can use an electric either hand held or a stand mixer.
Cream the butter & sugars. This will take about 2-3 minutes on medium-high speed.
Mixture should be light and fluffy. Meaning, it’s lightened in color and looks more voluminous in texture. Scrape down the bowl at least once.
Add eggs & vanilla. Make sure the eggs are at room temperature so they mix evenly. Scrape down the bowl again.
Add dry ingredients. Begin mixing on low speed to avoid a flour cloud!
Add chocolate chips. To avoid overworking your mixer or the dough, stir them in by hand with a stiff rubber spatula.
Bake or chill. If time permits, wrap the entire mass of dough or scoop into balls and cover tightly in plastic before refrigerating for up to 72 hours to improve flavor and texture.
Sprinkle of Science
If your cookies end up flat, butter that was too warm is likely the culprit. When creaming butter and sugar, your butter should be at a COOL room temperature. 67°F is perfect – or even a couple degrees cooler if your kitchen is very warm. If your butter is too warm, your cookies will spread into flat puddles.
Doing so will create dry, crumbly, hockey puck cookies that don’t spread (left). I promise, sugar does MUCH more than simply sweeten. You can learn more about how sugar functions in baking here.
Although not required for this recipe, I highly recommend chilling the cookie dough for 24-72 hours before baking. You can always bake off a few cookies immediately and chill the rest.
Chilling cookie dough improves your cookies in every way! It allows the moisture in the dough to be better absorbed by the flour, creating a thicker, chewier texture. It enhances the flavor and creates a richer, deeply butterscotch-y cookie. And it improves the golden brown exterior as the cookies bake, for crisp edges.
You can either scoop first and chill (make sure to wrap tightly in plastic), or chill the entire mass of dough, let it come to room temperature, then scoop.
Learn more about why chilling cookie dough matters here.
Each of the pictured cookies was from the same batch of cookie dough, baked at the same temperature of 350°F, and baked for 12 minutes. The only difference? The type of baking pan used!
Key takeaway: If you’re using a nonstick pan, you’ll likely need to decrease the baking time, possibly even the baking temperature. Check out my Best (and WORST) Baking Pans article here for more details on the science of baking pans.
- T-Fal Air Pan: pale cookies that spread more
- Wilton Non-Stick: browned heavily with less spread
- Walmart Mainstays: pale cookies, pan warped and rusted
- Viking Ceramic Lined: cookies burnt on the bottom
- Nordicware Unlined Aluminum: my favorite Goldilocks pan, I own 10 of these!
- OXO Gold Nonstick: browned heavily with less spread
Baking powder and baking soda are not interchangeable. Baking soda reacts with acidic ingredients in your dough or batter. In this recipe, it’s the brown sugar. It elevated the pH, leading to more browning and even spread. It’s my preferred choice for chocolate chip cookies!
Tessa’s Tip for Soft Cookies
Carry-Over Cooking: After ensuring you’ve measured your flour correctly, the trick to soft cookies is to take them 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 baking the cookies through to soft perfection once you allow them to cool completely.
My Favorite Cookie Tool: A Scoop
Using a stainless steel spring-loaded cookie scoop when portioning cookie dough is one of the secrets to beautifully uniform, evenly shaped, evenly baked cookies, and quickly. My cookie scoop is one of my most frequently used kitchen gadgets. Learn more about cookie scoops and how to use them here!
Storage
Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
To Keep Cookies Soft: add a piece of bread or a flour tortilla to your container of cookies about a day or two after baking them, or whenever you find the texture starting to harden. The moisture from the bread or tortilla will migrate to your cookies, making them soft and chewy again.
Freezing Instructions
I love the taste of cookies straight from the oven the best. I always keep cookie dough in my freezer so I can bake a few cookies off at a time in just minutes. If chilling your cookie dough to enhance the flavor and texture, do this FIRST. This magic only happens in the fridge, not the freezer.
- Portion your cookie dough into scoops. Place on a rimmed baking sheet.
- Place the sheet in your freezer for 1 hour, or until the dough balls are hardened.
- Remove to an airtight container and freezer for up to 2 months.
- Bake directly from the freezer at 325°F for 13 to 15 minutes.
Here are more tips for freezing cookie dough.
Troubleshooting & FAQs
If your cookies spread into sad, flat cookie puddles, it probably means that your butter was too warm when creaming. Your butter should be at a COOL room temperature; about 67°F is perfect. Butter that’s too warm can’t cream properly and will cause your cookies to overspread.
If your cookies didn’t spread and look like domes, taste bland, and feel dry and tough, it’s most likely that you accidentally added too much flour. I highly recommend using a digital kitchen scale to measure your ingredients, especially flour. It truly will improve your baking forever!
If you don’t have a scale, use the spoon and level method to measure your flour. Do NOT compact the flour into the measuring cup.
Also, check that your baking soda is fresh and still active. Baking soda helps promote spread and browning, for perfectly spread cookies with a golden brown edge.
Sure! Simply double all ingredients to make approximately 52 large cookies – no other modifications needed. Note: be sure to double-check every ingredient as you double it, so you don’t accidentally mis-measure something!
Yes, a hand mixer will work just as well as a stand mixer here.
Sure! I recommend 1 cup of chocolate chips and 1 cup of nuts.
Yes. Simply cut the salt in half (½ teaspoon) in the recipe.
As soon as the cookies come out of the oven, swirl a round cookie cutter (a little larger than the size of the cookies) around the edges. This pulls the edges of the cookies in for a perfectly round cookie – and, bonus, it also makes them even thicker!
You can also dot the tops of the cookie dough balls with a few extra chocolate chips before placing them in the oven, for extra pretty cookies.
I’ve had good results using Bob’s Red Mill oat flour in place of the all-purpose flour at a 1:1 ratio. The resulting cookies will taste a little nuttier, and will soften more and become chewier as they sit. See my full oat flour experiment on Instagram here!
Yes, replace the eggs with 50 grams of plain, unflavored, unsweetened yogurt. See my full egg substitute experiment on Instagram here.
No. Oatmeal zaps moisture, so recipes must be specifically engineered to include it. Luckily, I already have an Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe here!
Yes, just note that they won’t be as soft and chewy in the center. Use a medium 1.5-tablespoon-size cookie scoop and bake only for about 10-12 minutes instead. You will get about 50 cookies.
Yes, simply halve all ingredients and use a hand mixer instead of a stand mixer to achieve a uniform dough.
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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.
- Divide the dough into 3-tablespoon sized balls using a large cookie scoop and drop onto prepared baking sheets.
- If time permits, place the dough scoops into an airtight container 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. Bake from the fridge.
- 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.
Notes
More Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipes:
- Browned Butter Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies (ultra flavorful!)
- Marbled Chocolate Chip Cookies (classic and double chocolate chip cookie dough in one cookie!)
- Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (for serious PB lovers only!)
- Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Hot Cocoa Cookies
See ALL of my types of cookie recipes & cookie baking tips here!
A little pressed on time so I did just place dough in the freezer about 15 minutes as well as putting it back as the first batch cooked. Used a medium cookie scoop, and also added a half tsp baking powder. They cooked a little longer to get golden approximately 15 minutes and set to cool.
Turned out amazing! Soft yet Crispy outside, with perfect gooey and cooked through center.
Also added the extra few chips once off the cookie sheet, it really does make them look professionally baked. 😉
Making a second batch now, with half chocolate chips and half butterscotch.
Thank you!!
Love these cookies! Made them for culinary class and the came out perfect! Very soft and fluffy with a slightly crunchy exterior. Would recommend!
Very delicious cookies. We loved it! Would like to know if the cookies can still be eaten 1 week after I baked them? I will ship the cookies to my friends and possible it can be deliver after a week. Again, thank you so much for sharing this recipe 😊
Hi Emcee! So glad to hear that you enjoy these cookies! They look amazing 🙂 As Tessa mentions in the recipe, these cookies are best enjoyed within 3 days. It’s possible that they’ll keep longer than that, but we can’t guarantee they’ll still be good after a full week. If possible, we recommend overnight shipping when shipping cookies, so your lucky recipient can enjoy the cookies at their best. I hope that helps! Happy baking 🙂
Can i use brown butter in this recipe? can i do 1C Toffee and 1C milk chocolate chips? I wanted to use the brown butter toffee recipe but i dont want to have to chill for 24h, maybe 12h max.
Hi Lareessa! Please note that any browned butter recipe should be refrigerated for at least 24 hours, though, to allow for the butter to re-solidify and to allow the flour to fully hydrate, so you can enjoy thick, tasty cookies, instead of sad cookie puddles! While you’re welcome to experiment with using browned butter in this recipe, it isn’t super simple to swap out the butter here for browned butter. American butter is about 80% butterfat and 20% water (on average, depending on the brand of butter), so when you brown butter, you lose that extra moisture/water as it evaporates through the browning process. It takes some experimentation to alter a regular non-browned-butter recipe to work with browned butter for that reason. You can simply try adding a little water back into the recipe, or start with more butter than the recipe requests, in order to compensate for the moisture you’ll lose as it browns. Also, you’ll need to experiment with the method, as melted browned butter cannot cream, so the process also takes some experimentation. As for your mix-ins, feel free to experiment with any mix-ins you like; just keep the total weight/volume about the same as the recipe states, for best results. I hope that helps! Happy baking 🙂
We love these cookies! I always use less sugar than recipes call for and they still turn out great. The last two batches I’ve added maple extract and walnuts/pecans. So good! It takes quite a bit of extract to taste it. I used 2 TBSP for the recipe.
I’ve made these cookies several times and I like them, but I feel like I must be doing something wrong because they taste like they need more sugar. Mine taste a little like yummy chocolate chip scones. Maybe I need to pack the brown sugar more? Any thoughts would be appreciated!!
Hi Marilyn! I’m glad to hear that you enjoy these cookies, even if you feel that they’re not turning out quite right! We always recommend measuring your ingredients using a digital kitchen scale, to ensure 100% accuracy and to ensure consistent bakes. When using measuring cups, it’s super easy to add too little sugar, or especially too much flour – which could be why your cookies are reminding you more of scones! Here’s an article where Tessa explains this more. You could also try using milk chocolate chips (or a mix of your favorites) to give the cookies more of an overall sweetness. Feel free to also experiment with adding a little more sugar when making these cookies, if you want to experiment, but just note that adding additional sugar will change the texture, spread, and more – learn more about that here. I hope something here helps, Marilyn! Happy baking 🙂
These cookies came out beautifully. They have the texture and depth, I been disappointed in the past with other recipes because the cookies came out flat. Perfect combination of great taste and as well as great presentation.
Really good!
These cookies are delicious…will definitely make again
hi , how many cookies does this recipe make ? and if i chill them can i let them for 6 or 12 hours instead ?
Hi Kaelyn! This recipe makes about 26 cookies. You’re welcome to chill the dough for 6-12 hours, but I highly recommend going the full 24 hours! This ensures you have the best texture and flavor possible. That being said, we’ll look the other way if you bake up a few right away, they’re hard to resist! 😉
Hello! I have a question regarding the leavener used. Since in the science behind baking soda it says that it is better to mix it with baking powder for a dough that needs to refrigerate overnight, shouldn’t also baking powder be used in this recipe? Just trying to understand better how this all works and how the different recipes on the website will give different results, so to understand which one I prefer to try! 🙂
Thanks!
Chiara
Hi Chiara! Baking powder and baking soda are used for different reasons. Tessa explains why baking soda still works in cookie recipes in this article here. If you’re interested, Tessa has a fantastic online course you can take to learn more about the deep-dive differences little tweaks like this make in baking. Check out The Magic of Baking Course here! Happy baking 🙂
Hi Kiersten, thank you so much for your reply! Yes, I have read that articles and that was exactly what confused me. Because there Tessa mentions that baking soda reacts almost immediately when in contact with an acid, and that for this reason she prefers to add some baking powder when chilling a cookie dough for hours or overnight. However, in this recipe she does chill the dough for 24 or more hours but does not include baking powder, which is against what stated in that article. So just trying to understand what I am missing here 🙂
Looking forward to your reply to have a better understanding! Thanks a lot! Chiara
Hi again! While this reaction is true of baking powder vs. baking soda, it’s not as important for cookies because we’re not relying on the leavening agents to lift and give height the same way we are with cakes, muffins, etc. As Tessa says in the Chilling Cookie Doughs article, “Since cookie dough is relatively low in moisture (compared to muffin or cake batter), the chemical reactions occur more slowly anyway.” Because the chemical reaction with the acid (brown sugar) isn’t a hugely acidic ingredient, plus the cookies’ low moisture content, this reaction isn’t as fast as with cake/muffin/etc batters, so it can hold up to a chill period. While Tessa does sometimes prefer a baking powder + baking soda cookie, these specific cookies are formulated to maximize flavor, browning, texture, and thickness. Feel free to experiment with adding both leaveners here, if you like, but they’re perfect as they are, promise!
Hello. I don’t have a cookie scoop, will it work if I weigh each cookie ball?
Sure! A 3-tablespoon-size cookie scoop is about 2.25 ounces (64 grams) of dough. If you’re looking for a specific yield of cookies, you could also weigh the entire mass of dough and divide by your preference, then adjust the baking time as needed. I hope that helps!