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 and they didn’t flatten down. They were very dome-shaped and dry. Any ideas why this happened???
Hi Manpreet! These cookies should spread perfectly as they bake, and not be at all dry. 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. This is the most common cause of dry, hard cookies that won’t spread and stay overly domed. Check out Tessa’s article here, where she talks about how to best measure ingredients to ensure accuracy every time. I hope this helps! Happy baking 🙂
So i made them, and id advise you kind of squish them before baking. Overall didnt love them, but ive had significantly worse. Very bready for whatever reason
They work in a pinch though, can be made very quickly and with little effort.
Hi there! I’m sorry to hear that your cookies didn’t spread in the oven as they should. I wonder how you measure your ingredients – using cups, or by using a digital kitchen scale? When measuring using cups, it’s super easy to accidentally add too much of dry ingredients, particularly flour, and end up with dry cookies that don’t spread and feel bready. Check out Tessa’s article here, where she talks about how to properly measure ingredients. I hope this helps! Happy baking 🙂
I’ve made these cookies a few times now and they are sooo good!! The first time I made them I baked them off right away and they were delicious. After reading about refrigerating the dough I did that every other time for close to 24 hours and the difference it makes is unbelievable! I’ve made them for parties and people ask for the recipe and absolutely love them!! I love Tessa’s recipes and her tips they are so helpful. This recipe is a keeper for ever!!
Am I able to half this recipe if I have only enough chocolate chips for 1 cup? Would it come out the same just making less cookies?
Hi Tiffany! Yes, that should be just fine – just be sure to double-check all ingredients, as dividing a recipe in half can get a little tricky and it’s easy to miscalculate or mismeasure an ingredient. Let us know what you think of these cookies once you have given them a try!
I knew I had found the perfect easy recipe for Chocolate chip cookies based on the flour to sugar ratio.
Thanks
I have tons of recipes for cookies and cakes.etc many pasted down to me from family friends etc. I have at last 6 or 7 different recipes for chocolate chip cookies. The flour to sugar ratio is the base key to a great cookie .
This is my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe. It always makes absolutely perfect chocolate chip cookies.
i’ve never left a comment on a recipe EVER but this is such an easy recipe that’s perfect. if you love a cookie that’s chewy, this is it. i cannot STAND a cakey cookie, and these are now going to be my go-to cookies! would be soooo good with some crushed pretzels too. thank you!
So thrilled to hear that! Thanks so much for your wonderful comment 🙂
I’ve been trying to find the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe and tonight I FOUND IT!! These are soft and buttery and AWESOME!
I have never left a review on a blog before but I just HAD to come and say that this recipe is PHENOMENAL!! Like others, I’ve made probably 30+ different cookie recipes found online and even the ones on the flour or sugar bags. While they’ve all been good they all tasted like something was lacking. I still can’t quite put my finger on what that thing is but I do know that these cookies have it! I cooked half the dough immediately and half 48 hours later and both batches were great (and short lived in our home lol!) I plan to make these for any and every gathering. These taste like they are from a high end bakery and I’m baffled that I made these in my homes. Follow the recipe exact and you will not be disappointed!
Woohoo! So thrilled to hear that these were such a hit, Jacqui! Thanks so much for the comment 🙂
I just made the doughy to this but it doesn’t look like cookie dough/ the video. I put the exact amount of everything but it still doesn’t look like cookie dough, and looks more like cake batter but thicker. Is there a way for me to save this so I don’t waste the dough and why is this happening?
Hi Genesis! Without having baked alongside you, it’s so hard to say exactly what may have gone wrong. Was your butter perhaps too warm? Learn more about that here. Perhaps you accidentally mis-measured an ingredient, or missed something? I also recommend reading through all Tessa’s tips in the pink tip box (above the recipe) for info on chilling your dough, as that may help! Fingers crossed your cookies still taste great!
I have been making this recipe for 3 years now and I have only ever had rave reviews! I make them small and only bake for 8-9 minutes so they stay soft and WOW this recipe is amazing! Plus I’ve substituted nearly every ingredient other than flour and it has always turned out!
Can you make these gluten free??
Hi Markie! We haven’t tried that as we don’t bake with gluten-free substitutions. Let us know how it goes if you give that a try 🙂
I made these this week and used gluten-free flour. Came out lovely! Delicious flavour. Texture obviously different when you use GF flour but this is a great recipe for it!
Yay! Glad to hear that you were able to successfully convert these to gluten-free, Jess! 🙂