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.
these are too good! i made them with dark chocolate chips and it balanced the sweetness of the cookie perfectly. allowing them time to marinate i think made all the difference with the taste and texture. i made a double batch – scooped the dough on to a lined backing sheet, put it in the fridge for about 20 hours, took it out and brought it to almost room temp and baked them off. they did take 2-3 mins longer than the 13 minutes to bake but it may be because of the altitude (???). thanks for an outstanding recipe – this may be my new favorite (and i’ve tried LOTS!)
My daughter and I tried it and they did not come out bad but they did not came out great 🙁 we didnt marinated them though (not enough time, last minute school project). I thought they tasted too much like vanilla and a little dry for my taste. We will give it a try one more time though 🙂
Hi Jessica! I’m glad to hear that you enjoined these cookies enough to make them again, even if they seemed a little dry. Feel free to reduce the vanilla to your taste preferences, and be cautious not to add too much flour to the cookies. Adding too much flour likely accounts for the dryness you experienced, so I recommend reading Tessa’s article about measuring flour here before making these again 🙂
Hello. I made 1 cookie following this recipe today. I let the dough chill for about 16.5 or 17 hours. I baked it longer than 11-13 minutes. After 11 minutes, i checked on it and the top was still very much light and a bit high. I then rotated my baking sheet and put it back in the oven. I kept checking on it after 3 more minutes, than 4; the top seemed still too white/light. But by then i knew the bottom was going to be very brown. I think i baked it for about 22 minutes in total. I pulled it out of the oven when the top was finally golden brown. After it cooled down, the bottom was indeed almost burnt, but it spread nicely and kept its thickness. The middle was almost cake-like and i suspect its because of the longer bake time. I was afraid that if i did not let it bake longer, that part might have been underbaked.
When mixing the butter and sugar, i did keep to the 2-3 minutes time frame, maybe a minute more, because it didn’t look like the mixture in the video. It was still grainy, but also fluffy. Not as fluffy as in the video though. I didn’t want to overbeat it, but i also wanted to keep it similar as shown in the recipe video. While eating the cookie i wasn’t sure if the crumbs i was eating were from the dough’s texture or granules of sugar. They weren’t a bother tho.
I have a few questions:
1. How can i get the top of the cookie to brown faster?
2. While creaming the butter and sugar, should that mixture still be grainy? As brown sugar doesn’t melt as easily, is it thus normal that the mixture is still grainy? I could still see granules of sugar in the dough after i had incorporated all ingredients.
3. If i freeze the dough, for how long can it be frozen?
Hi Cheryl! I’m sorry if these cookies didn’t turn out as they should. In answer to your questions:
1. Your oven could be running a bit cool, which would account for the longer bake time. Does your oven have a convection setting? This could help with browning on top, but getting an oven thermometer to check that the oven is really at the temp it says it is really helps, too! Learn more about ovens and oven settings here.
2. Sugar won’t totally dissolve in butter as it creams, but it should break down slightly – learn more about that here.
3. Learn more about freezing cookie dough here.
I also just want to mention your cookie’s texture – if it’s too cakey, too much flour may have been incorporated. Do you weigh your ingredients, or measure with cups? Learn more about measuring here. Also, if your leavening agents are not no longer fresh, that could be why your cookies didn’t brown on top – learn more about that here.
I hope something here helps, and I hope your cookies are delicious! Happy baking 🙂
My oven isn’t a convection oven. I usually only measure by cups, but with this recipe i made sure to weigh the ingredients. And i put the exact amount of flour that was required. I also used fresh, new baking soda. Thank you for the tips.
Hi Cheryl! I’m glad to hear that it wasn’t either of those issues! Sounds like creaming of your butter + butter temp was the likely culprit then. I hope your cookies were still tasty and I’m sure you’ll nail it next time 🙂
Oh, yes! They were still tasty! Thank you & Happy Holidays to the whole Handle The Heat team!
I recently switched to Einkorn Flour for health for my family and it just didnt make robust cookies with the traditional toll house recipe. But this was PERFECT! thank u so much for sharing this! I will be using it for ALL my chocolate chip cookie making from now on!
The large scoop makes a big difference! Soft in the middle and a little crispy on the edges. I used the gram measurements rather than the cup measures. Letting them rest and cool for a day also helps.
I love using this recipe. Although I switch the vanilla extract out for almond extract. Almond is stronger so I recommend only using 3/4 tsp.
Do you use vanilla paste in your chocolate chip cookie recipe.
Hi CJ! We typically use vanilla extract, but feel free to use vanilla paste instead if you prefer. Happy baking 🙂
These were delicious! I made them with whole wheat bread flour (which normally does not work well) but this recipe worked well anyways. Soft, chewy, and yummy!
I made this with butterscotch chips and m&ms and they were such a hit! Definitely my new go to.
This is a very good recipe and tastes very nice.
Hi i made this cookies the tast amazing but the shape not like the picture its not flat
I want to know the reasone
Thanks
Hi Sunset! Most of the time, when cookies don’t spread, it’s due to too much flour being incorporated into the dough. 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 – resulting in cookies that don’t spread and have a tough, hard or cakey texture. Check out Tessa’s article here, where she talks about how to best measure ingredients to ensure accuracy every time. I hope that helps, and I hope you’ll give these cookies another try – they really are fantastic! Happy baking 🙂
Hi Kierst i use cup to measure the flour should i sift it ?
Hi Sunset! No need to sift – this article here will teach you how to measure using a cup! 🙂
I have made these cookies a couple of times. I freeze the dough to bake when I need them. I’m not sure why the cookies don’t flatten even though I let them get to room temperature before baking. Any suggestions?
Hi Jo! It sounds like you may be adding a little too much flour. 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 – resulting in cookies that don’t spread. Check out Tessa’s article here, where she talks about how to best measure ingredients to ensure accuracy every time. I hope that helps! Happy baking 🙂