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: Super easy 30-minute recipe.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe: Easy, delightful chocolate chip cookie recipe. I’ve made this recipe probably 100 times always 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 three 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.
What Makes Cookies Chewy, Crisp, or Cakey?
My free guide reveals the ingredients and tweaks that matter.
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!
I love this time-lapse video 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!
Sprinkle of Science
How to Make The Best Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies
How to Make Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
The key to the best soft, Bakery Style Chocolate Chip 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 Bakery Style 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 beautifully uniform, evenly-shaped, 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, and 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!)
- Marbled Chocolate Chip Cookies (classic and double chocolate chip cookie dough in one cookie!)
- 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
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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.
- 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.
Recipe Notes
The Ultimate Cookie Handbook
Learn the sweet SCIENCE of cookie baking in a fun, visual way to customize your own recipes frustration-free. Plus, my best 50+ homemade cookies!
Photos by Jess Larson.
I will be putting these in the oven today. That got me to thinking, I completely understand your comments about weighing the ingredients prior to mixing. I am also curious what weight you are coming up with for the cookie dough ball when you make this recipe. I.e., when you use your three tablespoon scoop, what is the weight in grams of the ball? I don’t plan on weighing every ball of cookie dough, but a sampling of them would be a great comparison to what you’re using. Thank you.
I’ve honestly never weighed them, sorry! When I’m scooping with my 3T scoop, really any cookie recipe, I scoop the dough, push it into the scoop and flatten it with my palm. That ensures the dough balls will all be the same/close to the same amount in weight and bake evenly. I hope that helps!
These are the best chocolate chip cookies!!! I had one recipe that I’ve made over and over and over for years. This recipe has now replaced that one! I make it weekly and always keep cookie dough in the freezer now. And this week we made fresh cookies from the frozen dough and topped them with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream while still warm!!! Heavenly!!!!
So happy to hear this is now your go-to recipe, Laura! Chocolate chip cookies and ice cream sounds delicious!!
What could be the substitute for eggs?
I believe eggs are essential to this recipe. I haven’t tested it without them or with any substitutions, sorry!
These cookies were so good!! Thank you for this amazing recipe!
I’m so happy you loved them!
If I add walnuts to this recipe would I need to change the baking time?
Nope!
Tessa, you are absolutely amazing! Excellent recipe! My co-workers loved them as much as I did! I’m so glad that I bought your cookie cookbook! I wish all your other recipes were in one cookbook as well. It would make it so much easier. You are truly the Best! Thank you for sharing so much with the rest of us homemakers!
Thank you so much for your sweet comment, Nora! I so appreciate that you took the time to share with me 🙂 I’m so happy to hear everyone loved these cookies!
By far the best chocolate chip cookies recipe! I’ve tried a million over the years and this is a family favorite. I may have put in even more choc chips but so delicious. I made some and put leftovers in the freezer to pop in the oven and their still perfect
Wonderful to hear! So happy your family loves them 🙂
Hi, I am freezing my dough for 24 hours. Your article on baking frozen cookie dough says to bake it 20 degrees less. Does this mean I should be baking the frozen cookie dough at ~325 instead? Or bake at original 350. Thank you!
Yes, baking directly from frozen you want to preheat the oven to about 20 degrees lower. I’d actually recommend chilling your dough for 24 hours instead of freezing them though! You can find more about that here: https://handletheheat.com/the-1-reason-why-you-should-chill-your-cookie-dough/
Wow, really great cookies!! Excellent flavor. Super soft insides. I will definitely be making these again.
Love these! So soft and gooey! My boyfriend will only eat the pilsbury chocolate chip cookies but these met his high standards no more store bought cookie dough for us
I weighed my ingredients and chilled the dough but I only got a few hours of chilling in because I didn’t want to wait for them haha I’ll plan to chill them longer next time but they came out perfect already!
It’s hard to wait for sure! Honestly, I always bake up some immediately, but then I chill the rest 🙂 I’m excited to see if you notice a difference in the taste and texture after chilling!
Woohoo! The ultimate compliment!! So happy to hear they were a hit! 🙂
Thanks for the recipe! As someone in the UK, am I better off using the cups or grams measurements? I have seen some bakers provide both but recommend cups over grams. Thank you
Personally I think everyone should weigh their ingredients, it ensures the accuracy of what the recipe author used! You can see in my ingredients list that I don’t weigh small measurements (like teaspoons) or liquids. When it comes to milk, water, or creams, there’s no air inside those ingredients, so it’s safe to use cups 🙂 Hope this helps!
I followed the recipe as written and it came out really tasty! I also followed the tips mentioned and it really does make a difference. Take your time and read the details. That’s were the end result gets kicked up a notch. They taste just like a really good cookie from a bakery
So happy to hear your cookies turned out perfectly, Jana!