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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.
What Makes Cookies Chewy, Crisp, or Cakey?
My free guide reveals the ingredients and tweaks that matter.
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:
About how long do you cream the sugars and butter? I have the big Kitchenaid mixer also and I think I may be overcreaming mine. They come out of the oven beautiful, but fall flat as they cool, they also seem to spread too much. This only seems to be happening since I got the big mixer. Thanks so much!
would love to see tests on what the cookies look like when you “over add” ingredients (similar to your spike of additional flour) — so what do cookies look like when there is too much sugar? too much eggs? too much shortening? too much soda?…
This is absolutely fascinating! Thanks for sharing!
Ironically (given the domain name), the “other” dimension of heating temperature vs. time isn’t tested here. My wife and I have found that a slightly lower temp and longer baking time, followed (after all are cooked) by a stay in the turned-off-but-still-warm oven, does a much better job of carmelizing the sugar. Not the best approach for those who like soft cookies, but for us crispy-lovers, it’s outstanding.
(In appearance they look similar to the “all brown sugar” and “chilled 24hr” ones, just somewhat browner.)
wow i am so glad to posted this i have made all of the above cookies but i could not figure out why each time they wee different Thank you for solving what was a puzzle to me !!
Thanks so much for posting this! My kids and I make chocolate chip cookies often, using a recipe from the Mrs. Fields Cookie Book. We’ve occasionally experimented with changing the proportions of some of the ingredients, but what you present here is far more extensive and systematic than what we’ve done.
Btw, in reference to the question from another commenter above, “How do we duplicate Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookies at home?” — the recipe in the Mrs. Fields Cookie Book makes very good cookies, but while they are similar to the cookies sold in Mrs Fields stores, they are definitely not quite the same. I don’t know what accounts for the difference, but after reading this post, I wonder if more brown sugar and baking powder might have something to do with it… time to experiment!
Growing up, I always loved my Grandmother’s Chocolate Chip Cookies. When I was older, I asked her for her recipe. Turns out it was the Tollhouse recipe, but she uses 4T butter and 4T margarine instead of the unsalted butter. They turn out completely crispy…and delicious! Although there are still times when I prefer a more chewy cookie, so this guide will definitely come in handy! 🙂
Thanks so much for this! My family is a big fan of chocolate chip cookies, and while mom is great at making them, I’m sure she’ll enjoy this. I personally am not a fan of the cookies themselves, but I do love the cookie dough! Which recipe has the best tasting dough in your opinion?
How do you achieve those cookies that are all totally crispy, like the famous amos kind?
Here’s my question… how do we duplicate Mrs. Field’s chocolate chip cookies at home?
The melted butter picture looks most like ours. When my Grandma passed away my cousin and I realized we hadn’t written down her chocolate chip cookie recipe so he and I sat down and wrote down exactly what we remembered her doing. She didn’t ever use a mixer, (she used a big spoon, and I still use the same one) and she always melted her butter. She also SIFTED her flour, which I find makes a big difference…and causes me to leave off the two extra tablespoons of flour. We also figured out that to get the right texture…a little crispy near the edges and puffy and chewy in the middle…that we needed to use a little more brown sugar than white, so I just increased the brown sugar by a quarter cup, and decreased the white by the same amount. Now every time I make those cookies it’s like I’m a kid again and my sweet little Grandma is still with me!
Great blog post ! Have you ever tried replacing butter for shortening ? Delicious!!! Would love to know your thoughts on this. My friend makes the “control recipe ” you listed … But uses shortening instead of butter , and makes the cookies little tiny bite sized … She made 600 cookies for my sons grad party … They were ALL gone ,,,,!!!!!