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.
Turned out perfectly!
These taste great, but came out totally flat, therefore similar to other chocolate chip cookie recipes. I only chilled my dough for about 18 hours since I needed them sooner than the suggested 24-48 hour chill time. However, I measured my flour in grams using a scale as suggested, and bought brand new baking soda. Also used an “airbake” cookie sheet, which have always been great at preventing browned bottoms and helping maintain ideal temperatures… not sure what went wrong.
Hi Alyssa! I’m sorry to hear that these cookies were not as thick and delicious as they should be! One of the leading causes of over-spread cookies is under or over-creaming your butter and sugars, and how warm your butter was at this time. Both have a huge impact on a cookie’s outcome. Have a look at this article, where Tessa discusses both and the repercussions on the resulting baked goods. While I doubt it’s entirely the cause of your overspreading, the Airbake pan likely isn’t helping matters. While Airbake pans do prevent the bottoms of the cookies from over-browning, Tessa has found that they don’t conduct heat terribly well, which could cause some overspreading. Have a look at this article where Tessa performed a ton of experiments on cookie pans, with pictures and info. I also recommend checking out Tessa’s article here on How to Bake THICK cookies, full of helpful tips and information. I hope something here helps, Alyssa, and I hope you give these cookies another try sometime – they really are SO good! 🙂 Happy baking!
These are easy and delicious! I didn’t refer the dough just mixed it and rolled into golf balls size rounds! They didn’t spread like some cookies do! Which I liked! Will make again
I have tried this recipe twice and both times my butter and sugar mixture does not get very creamy the butter is more clumpy. When I add the eggs it more creamy but not smooth. Any tips?
Hi Ashlinne! Hmm, that’s super strange. What temperature is the butter when creaming? It sounds like your butter might be a little too cold. You also might not be creaming your butter and sugar quite long enough – learn more about that here. I encourage you to check out all Tessa’s tips and info in the pink tip box above this recipe. I hope you give this recipe another try – these cookies really are soooo good (especially after the dough has rested 24-72 hours in the fridge!).
Thankyou so much for all the explanation on the importance of ingredients. I do have a question and that is using cooking oil instead of butter. Have you tried and what’s your advice on using oil and how much? I’m planning on trying your recipe with canola oil so I’ll let you know how it goes
Hi Carm! I recommend checking out Tessa’s article here about Oil vs. Butter in baking. We haven’t tested this recipe with anything but real butter and we don’t recommend using oil instead, as the flavor and texture will completely change – but feel free to experiment as you wish! Let us know how it goes!
Can anyone tell me how many cookies this recipe makes using the 3TBS scoop?
Hi Amber! It actually says this right at the top of the recipe card. This recipe makes 26 cookies 🙂 let us know what you think of the recipe, once you’ve given these cookies a try! 🙂
Not impressed. I was hoping the the sugar ratios would be the key to a chewier cookie, compared to a cakier one, but that wasn’t the case. They didn’t taste bad, just not the texture i was looking for.
Hi Ashlee! This recipe should definitely yield a chewier cookie, and definitely not a cakey cookie. I’m just wondering – how do you measure your ingredients? By volume (using cups), or by weight (using a digital kitchen scale)? When measuring by volume, it’s so easy to mis-measure ingredients (particularly flour) and throw off the entire chemistry of a recipe, and end up with a dense or cakey cookie. Check out Tessa’s article here, where she talks about how to best measure ingredients to ensure accuracy every time. Refrigerating your dough for 24-72 hours will also help the texture immensely, as Tessa explains in the pink tip box above the recipe, and more in-depth in this article here! Alternatively, I recommend trying Tessa’s Ultimate Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies, which use some bread flours and ratios to ensure an ultra chewy, delicious cookie. I hope that helps! Happy baking 🙂
Hello
Love this recipe. Can I wrap them put in the freezer for an hour or two instead of 24 hours in fridge?
Also can I cut them in slices from the log?
Thank you.
Hi Soozee! You can try forming the dough into a log and slicing – we haven’t tried it ourselves, but it should work. Sliced cookies often don’t look as pretty, because of the way some of the chocolate chips get cut off, and the different way they will spread out in the oven – but if that’s the way you’d prefer to portion out the dough, by all means, give it a try! As for the fridge vs the freezer, it doesn’t work the same way unfortunately. To gain all the benefits in texture, flavor and even color, the dough needs to be refrigerated 24-72 hours. Freezing just can’t give those same benefits. Read more about this here! Happy baking 🙂
Hi Kiersten!
I wanted to make less cookies, is it okay to cut the ingredients in half and yield the same results (texture, taste, etc)? Also would anything change with the chewiness if I add less chocolate chips?
I’m super excited to make this and thought your recipe stood out to many others I’ve researched (:
Hi Julianne! Yes, you can absolutely cut this recipe in half – just be sure to double-check each ingredient as you add it, just to be sure you didn’t accidentally add the wrong amount (I know I’ve done that before haha!). Cutting the recipe in half won’t change the texture – but if time permits, we definitely recommend refrigerating these cookies 24-72 hours before baking, for maximum chewiness! Check out all of Tessa’s tips in the pink tip box above the recipe for more info 🙂 Let us know what you think once you’ve given these cookies a try – we think you’ll love them! 🙂
They came out SO GOOD!!! Helped my daughter make them for a 4H competition. Fingers crossed she takes them to school tomorrow.
These are the best! Wish I could share my picture of them! Won’t go back to any other recipe
tks for sharing.. instead of scoop the dough, i weigh it for 75g per ball.. baked freezed dough straight from freezer at 156 degree for 16min (preheat 20min+).however still found it bit under cook. able to advise what will be the good temp & duration to archive ideal cookie? TIA
Hi Doreen! Since we measure these out by size and not weight, I cannot tell you exactly how long they will bake for (and every oven is different, as well as most ovens not actually running at the temperature they say they are!) so I can only guide you to bake until golden brown. Tessa’s article here on baking cookies from frozen may help you too 🙂 You can always bake off one test cookie, see how that tastes, and adjust the timing from there, until you perfect the level of baking to your satisfaction! I hope that helps. Happy baking!