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!
Is there anything I should be doing differently if i’m going to be using a toaster oven? Or am I just totally setting myself up for failure?
I can’t say for sure, Priya, we haven’t tested these in a toaster oven. Please let us know how it goes if you give it a try 🙂
Hi Tessa.. I want to thank you so much for giving the best chocolate chip recipes… I tried your recipe a few months back and absolutely loved it… After that I also tried a few other recipes but none compared to this one… The only other cookie recipe that I like better than this one is your brown butter toffee chocolate chip cookies and they are just pure heaven and chilling the dough takes these cookies to another level…Keep up the fabulous work..
Thanks so much for the kind comment, Mariyam! I agree completely with you, both are my favorite as well!
I loved them! They were perfect!
I wanted to love this recipe, but the bottoms of my cookies browned well before the middle cooked. They aren’t burned, just a bit crunchy on the bottom. The only things (I think) that I did differently were to use regular cookie sheets instead of half sheet pans and a medium cookie scoop instead of a large since I don’t have a large. I had thought I simply needed to reduce the baking time accordingly to account for the size difference, but still had an issue. I’m sure I must have done something wrong, but am not sure what. Any ideas?
Hi Alexis! What type of cookie sheet did you use, was it dark or light colored? You were correct in reducing the baking time with a smaller cookie scoop, but the surface you bake on has a profound impact as well on how quickly your cookies bake, brown, and spread out. We suggest avoiding dark-colored nonstick pans as they conduct heat far too aggressively and result in darker cookie bottoms. We recommend using unlined aluminum pans, like from Nordicware or Chicago Metallic. I hope that helps, and I really encourage you to try this recipe again! It (along with the Browned Butter Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies) is one of my all-time favorites, and I’d love for you to enjoy them the way they’re meant to be 🙂
Hi! I used a light colored Wilton cookie sheet. I’m so confused because I’ve never had issues like this in the past. I’ve been wracking my brain and am wondering if maybe I needed a sturdier pan and perhaps a higher oven rack? I used the middle. Should it have been the upper middle instead? Also, does parchment do anything for the baking process other than result in an easier cleanup? I’ll definitely try these again. They did have a good flavor. It’s just the consistency that was off in my first attempt. The brown butter toffee cookies were next on my list to try 🙂
I actually think it might be your cookie sheet! Have you had this issue in the past when baking cookies on that specific cookie sheet? Tessa experimented with different types of baking pans, including Wilton’s non-stick, in this article HERE, and I can see just from the photos that the bottoms are much more brown on that cookie sheet. It’s honestly a personal preference, but I’d suggest sticking with the Nordicware half sheets if you’re looking for a lighter coloring on the bottom.
Baking on the middle rack with cookies is normal. The pan that you bake on matters more than parchment because that’s actually what conducts the heat, and the material of the pan is what matters most. Parchment paper doesn’t conduct heat, and like you said, just makes for an easy clean up. How were the tops of the cookies? Were they golden brown or darker like the bottoms?
I’m so sorry, I forgot to check the box to be notified when a comment was added! I’ve never had this issue before, which is why it’s confusing me here. My Wilton sheet is a regular finish, not non-stick, but it is undoubtedly thinner than a Nordic Ware half sheet pan. It was only the bottoms that over browned. The rest of the cookie was fine. Thank you for helping me figure this out 🙂
I just baked them and they were PURE perfection My friends loved and there kids couldn’t stop eating them ❤
Wonderful! So happy to hear your cookies were enjoyed by all! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Absolutely the best chocolate chip cookie recipe EVER! And I have made ALOT! I made it exactly and chilled atleast 24hrs. The only thing I did was add mini chocolate chips and chocolate chunks! Perfection!
Delicious!! Can’t go wrong with extra chocolate, yum!
This recipe is ABSOLUTELY a keeper! I think I’ve made it 10 times so far, giving baked cookies or frozen dough balls to friends and family. They have been such a blessing.
I do have one question though – I’m trying to do more thoughtful, handmade stocking stuffers for family this year. I’ve always found the ‘cookie mix in a jar’ gifts to be cute and thrifty.
Do you think this recipe could be adapted to a mix like that? Leaving out the butter, eggs, and vanilla, of course. I imagine combining the wet ingredients with all the others (in the jar) should work hypothetically, with only potential downsides being less leavening (from not being able to cream just butter and sugars) or overmixing.
Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!
Hi Lindsay! What a fun idea! Cookies in a jar are SO cute, my mom makes them for everyone at Christmas 🙂 I honestly can’t say for sure how the cookies would turn out though if the dry ingredients including the sugars were mixed together. I would suggest experimenting in advance if you can, just to make sure the cookies turn out ok. Please let us know how it goes! Good luck!
Just made these, the only thing I did different was using dark brown sugar cause thats all I had lol. They turned out so yummy!! I scooped the dough balls and put them in the freezer on a platter while I preheated the oven. Good recipe!
Glad you enjoyed them, Lisa!
WINNER! Throw away all you other recipes!
Happy to hear this!
Husband just said these are the only classic chocolate chip cookies to make from now on. They were the perfect consistency of taste and texture you want.
This is my 7th handle the heat recipe I have made and I can confidently say Tessa knows what she’s doing abs her recipes never fail!!!!
Haha yay! So glad these cookies were a hit!
Finally found my go-to recipe for homemade chocolate chip cookies! However, when I doubled the recipe, the cookies came out with crispy/crunchy edges like they were stale & a bit dry, and the inside was chewy. I doubled everything, including the baking soda, and measure with a scale. Is there anything to be aware of when multiplying the recipe?
We haven’t experienced that issue when doubling the recipe, Jan! How strange! You are correct, every ingredient should be doubled. Was your baking soda or any other ingredient expired? These cookies do have golden brown edges with a chewy center, do you think perhaps they were baked a bit longer than your last batch? Were your baked cookies flat as well? I wonder if maybe your butter wasn’t at a cool room temperature. That can result in thinner cookies and more spread, which could result in crispy edges. I hope you give this recipe another try! Fingers crossed watching those little details carefully will make all the difference!
I have baking sheets with and without sides. I always thought the sides hindered the bake, but see that you prefer pans with sides. Now I’m unsure of which pan to bake cookies on! What is your opinion?
Hi Patricia! We prefer a rimmed baking sheet, like these unlined Nordicware sheet pans, but Chicago Metallic is great too. Aluminum sheet pans are used and loved in most culinary schools and professional kitchens. We’ve found that when baking cookies on a rimless baking sheet, they browned more quickly and finished baking much sooner than on a rimmed pan, they’re just not our preference. When baking on a rimless baking sheet, be sure to keep in mind that the timing of what you’re baking will have to be reduced. I hope that helps!