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In this post I’m going to share with you how various ingredients and techniques can affect the taste, texture, and appearance of your chocolate chip cookies. This will hopefully help you understand how a Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe works so you can make the PERFECT batch every time, whatever you consider to be perfect. This information will allow you to alter or create your own chocolate chip recipe that produces cookies just the way YOU like them. You’ll be an expert on the anatomy of the chocolate chip cookie.
I used the Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe as my control and made little changes and variations in techniques and ingredients to show you how they affect the cookie.
I halved and adapted the original Tollhouse recipe. I kept everything the same through each recipe test, changing just one key thing to see its effect and photographing the results for you.
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Cookie Tools and Ingredients Used:
Tools and Ingredients Used (when applicable):
-Spring-Loaded Cookie Scoop (Medium or 1 1/2-Tablespoon size)
–Chicago Metallic sheet pans
–Escali Digital Food Scale
–KitchenAid 5-quart Stand Mixer
–Oven thermometer
–Unbleached parchment paper
-Gold Medal All-Purpose Flour
-Fine sea salt
-Light brown sugar
-Large eggs
-Unsalted butter at a cool room temperature
Control Recipe
Ingredients:
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (142 grams) all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (113 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (75 grams) granulated sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (75 grams) packed light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 large egg
1 cup (170 grams) semi sweet chocolate chips
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line baking sheets with nonstick baking mats or 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. Add the egg and vanilla, beating well to combine. Gradually beat in the flour mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips. Scoop 1 1/2 tablespoon-sized balls and place onto prepared baking sheets.
Bake for 9 to 11 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool for 2 minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely.
Here is the control, an adapted version of the Nestle Tollhouse recipe. The full recipe I used to base all of the tweaks on is at the bottom of this post.
Baking Powder:
Removed baking soda from recipe and used 1/2 teaspoon baking powder. This produced results that were more cakey and puffed while baking.
Baking Powder AND Baking Soda:
Used 1/4 teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda. This produced results that were crisp at the edges, soft in the middle, with a good amount of spread. The combination of the two leaveners produced the best results in my opinion.
MORE Flour:
Increased the flour to 2 cups (250 grams) which created a more crumbly dough and very little spread. The cookies were small yet thick and relatively undercooked (ooey and gooey) in the middle.
MELTED Butter:
I replaced the room temperature butter with melted and cooled butter. Instead of creaming the butter and sugar with an electric mixer, I simply stirred the butter and sugars together then let sit for 5 minutes, until the sugar was better absorbed by the butter. This produced flatter cookies that had a shiny, crackled top reminiscent of brownies. They were also more crisp at the edges.
All Granulated Sugar:
I used 3/4 cup granulated sugar (150 grams) in this recipe which produced flat, white, chewy, and slightly crunchy cookies but with little flavor. Since baking soda (called for in the control recipe) requires an acid (such as brown sugar) to react, these cookies fell very flat as you can see by the way the chocolate chips protrude.
All Brown Sugar:
I used 3/4 cup (150 grams) packed light brown sugar in this recipe which produced thick, brown, and soft cookies with an intense butterscotch flavor. The original control recipe uses an even ratio of granulated and brown sugars. If you prefer your cookies to be flatter, chewier, or crisper, use more granulated sugar. If you prefer your cookies to be softer and thicker and have a pronounced butterscotch flavor, use more brown sugar.
24-hour CHILLED Dough:
I used the control recipe but chilled it in the fridge for about 24 hours before shaping and baking. This produced cookies that were slightly thicker, chewier, darker, and with a better depth of butterscotch flavor. If you have time, try chilling your next cookie dough for at least 24 hours, or up to 48 hours.
Final Comparison:
Do you omit the salt if you use salted butter?
After all the variations you showed, your recommendation is to use baking powder and baking soda kave teaspoon of each?
Never use salted butter for cooking or baking. You are giving up control of one of the most important ingredients (salt) in any recipe. Different brands of butter use different salt-to-cream ratios in their products, so it’s impossible to say if using salted butter will come out too salty or not salty enough. Who knows? By using unsalted butter, you can fine tune exactly how much salt you like in the recipe, and you can replicate your results regardless of the brand of butter you are using.
hello I am known as the cringler a master in nothing but with your help I made cookies so good I swear my grandma cryd
Wow the cringler, it looks like I have some competition, my cookies made my grandPA cryd.
This was amazing. I have been making the same cookie recipe for years, but in the last year they never turn out anymore. I have examined what I could be doing wrong and have tried many solutions to no avail. Can butter brand and or flour brand have an impact? I am so frustrated.
Same. Something isn’t the same as before. I do the directions to a T. I use all brand name ingredients but it doesn’t work out like it use to. I am totally baffled.
I have read that they are feeding cows flaxseed now, very oily. Wondering if this affects the butter.
It might help to have some more specifics: in what way are they not “turning out”? Too flat? Too cake-y? Too oily?
Two things that have consistently effected my bakes in the past are 1. expired or improperly mixed leavening, and 2. discovering my oven was no longer calibrated to the temp I was setting it to.
For problem 1: always give your baking powder a good shake before using. People assume it’s a grab and use ingredient but that is NOT the case. The different things in the mix have different densities and fall out of mix quite easily.
As for the second issue, it’s about getting a oven thermometer and figuring out the difference between what you set your oven to and what the actual temperature inside is. Also look for bad seals on your oven door. Once when I was cleaning my oven I pulled out the door a bit and it never went back in completely. For months everything I baked was a mess.
Thank you!! this was very helpful. I bake often and although flat choc chip cookies still taste great they’re not “pretty!” 🙂
Thank you for doing all of this!!
How many cookies would the control recipe make?
Hi Cindy! You should get about 20 cookies from the control recipe if using a 1 1/2 Tablespoon cookie scoop. I would recommend instead checking out Tessa’s Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe – it’s the most popular recipe on our site! Happy baking 🙂