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 made these cookies and they were absolutely fabulous! I now make a double batch and freeze the dough in ice cream scoop size. Anytime I have people over or just feel like I need a cookie, I set my oven to 350, pop them in and 20 minutes later I have fresh, delicious cookies 🙂
My friends who have tried them say they are the best they’ve had. Thanks for the great recipe!
I’d like to preface this review by noting that this recipe is the one I used for my FIRST EVER foray into baking from scratch. I’ve cooked for most of my life, but I can honest to goodness say that in all that time, I’ve never baked anything that didn’t come – at least partly – from a box or bag or refrigerated package. With that said, I admit my review is tinged by inexperience.
So, with some hilarity at times, I tackled this recipe as my first attempt to bake entirely from the ground up, and I enjoyed it, but even better: I enjoyed the cookies a lot, and I bet they get even better and better as I become more experienced. I so appreciate the tips interwoven throughout the article and the recipe itself, and I can safely promote using the digital kitchen scale for measuring as Tessa instructs. It was easier (in my opinion), I felt more confident given I was already in no-man’s land, and I feel the chocolate chip to dough ratio was especially good, so I am glad I followed the recipe to the letter and measured with Tessa’s advice in mind.
I had some trouble with some of my cookies (I baked them in several batches) pooling too quickly in the oven and, as a result, being flatter than some of the tastier ones; however, I know that is likely because some of the cookie dough was too warm when it went into the oven. I did not chill my dough overnight, but I did chill my dough once it was balled and put on the cookie sheet for 10 – 15 minutes before baking. My best cookies were the ones that went straight from chilling to the oven itself. However, I only have so much space on my shelves, so other cookies from this batch weren’t lucky enough to go straight from chilling to baking (and those were the flatter ones I mentioned earlier).
I thank you so much for posting your article and this recipe. I can’t wait to try it again and continue to improve!
Hi Nik! So happy you love this recipe, I enjoyed reading through your experience! I’m so glad to see that you’re using a digital scale to measure your ingredients. I think the reason why your cookies are spreading in the oven is due to your butter being too warm in the beginning. For best results, you want to use cool room temperature butter, which is about 67°F. We have a great photo showing what your butter should actually look like at that temp in THIS ARTICLE HERE, about 1/3 of the way down the page. Making that adjustment should make a huge difference in the outcome of your cookies 🙂 I’d also highly recommend “marinating” your dough overnight with your next batch as it improves the texture and flavor even more! I hope that helps, please let me know if you have any questions, I’m happy to help!
Hello,
I want to try these today…would it be okay to cut the ingredients in half to make half a batch?
Sure, that’ll be fine! Just as a tip, you’re welcome to make the full recipe, complete the “marinating” process, then freeze half the batch to bake at a later time! More details are included in the pink tip box above the recipe if you’re interested
I make this recipe with only one sub. Gluten free flour… and it’s incredible! Even folks who can eat gluten love it!
Best Chocolate Chip Cookie I’ve made. My husband & kids LOVED them (as did I)!
I used mini chocolate chips because they are so cute and I added an 1/8 tsp of cinnamon for the antioxidants. They are so good. It wasn’t difficult at all. These are my go-to ccc. Absolutely love these and I highly recommend.
These cookies look so good my mouth is watering and I dont know how i can wait 72 hours to eat them! I liked the idea of adding some oats to this recipe that another person used. How would I do that? Do i just add 1/2 cup to the flour mixture? or do i need to substitute a half cup of flour for the oats?
I will comment again after I make these.
We haven’t tried adding oats to these cookies, so I can’t say for sure! Keep in mind that if you do add oats, you won’t want to refrigerate the dough more than 48 hours as oats are a very drying ingredient. Also, feel free to bake up a few right away to enjoy and refrigerate the rest of the dough, we can’t wait that long either 🙂 If you’d rather use a tested cookie recipe using oats, check out our Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. I hope that helps!
The best chocolate chip cookie ever!! This is now the only chocolate chip cookie I make!
That’s so great to hear! Happy you love this recipe 🙂
I followed the recipe exactly and there was 3 entire batches and every single one was different and didn’t taste good
Sorry to hear you experienced issues with your cookies, Alyssa! Do you use a digital scale to measure your ingredients? Did you substitute any ingredients? I’d love to help figure out what went wrong with your cookies so you can try them the way they’re meant to be! Please let me know if you’d like help troubleshooting further.
This is my go to chocolate chip recipe for some time now. I love to bake and always try new recipes for family favorites. I have to look no further for chocolate chip cookies since I have been making these. Thank you!
That’s so great to hear how much your family loves this recipe, thanks for taking the time to comment!
YUMMY!!! I have made these a few times now and they turn out great every time. 🙂
So happy you love this recipe! Thanks for the comment!
New favorite recipe!!! Posting a picture on my Instagram.