Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies

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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. 

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 is the Key to Golden Brown Cookies

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.

Baking powder and baking soda are not interchangeable – as you can see in the experiment image above. Find out more in my Baking Soda vs. Baking Powder article here.

Don’t Skip the Salt!

One time, my husband, Joe, forgot the salt in this recipe. It took me .5 seconds after my first bite to realize something was very wrong! Cookies without salt are flat and bland. 

I like to use fine sea salt because I prefer the taste to iodized table salt, and because its fine granule size distributes into the dough more evenly than kosher salt.

I’ll even sprinkle these cookies with flaky sea salt when they come out of the oven for a salty-sweet bite.

Butter at the Right Temperature (This is KEY!)

If there’s one mistake most cookie bakers make, it’s letting their butter get too warm at any point before the cookie dough hits the oven. When this happens, your cookies are much more likely to spread into sad flat puddles. 

The ideal temperature is around 67°F, which means the butter will give slightly when gently pressed, but isn’t so warm it turns visibly greasy and totally soft.

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.

Important: Don’t reduce the sugar in this recipe! Doing so will create dry, crumbly, hockey puck cookies that don’t spread. You can learn more about how sugar functions in baking here (hint: it does much more than sweeten).

The Eggs

Essential for binding together the cookie dough, eggs also add extra protein and fat for added richness and structure.

You may replace the eggs with 50 grams of plain, unflavored, unsweetened yogurt if needed.

Vanilla Extract

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!

Recommended Equipment

The Best Baking Pan for Cookies

Each of the cookies below is 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!

1. T-Fal Air Pan: pale cookies that spread more
2. Wilton Non-Stick: browned heavily with less spread
3. Walmart Mainstays: pale cookies, pan warped and rusted
4. Viking Ceramic Lined: cookies burnt on the bottom
5. Nordicware Unlined Aluminum: my favorite Goldilocks pan, I own 10 of these!
6. OXO Gold Nonstick: browned heavily with less spread

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.

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!

The Key to Soft Cookies

If you want perfect cookies, here is an important note about technique.

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.

Why You Should Chill Your Cookie Dough

Although not required for this recipe, I do highly recommend chilling the cookie dough for 24-72 hours before baking. Don’t worry, 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.

Cookie Storage Notes

How to Freeze Cookie Dough

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.

1. Portion your cookie dough into scoops. Place on a rimmed baking sheet.
2. Place the sheet in your freezer for 1 hour, or until the dough balls are hardened.
3. Remove to an airtight container and freezer for up to 2 months.
4. Bake directly from the freezer at 325°F for 13 to 15 minutes.

Here are more tips for freezing cookie dough.

How to Keep Cookies Soft in Storage

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.