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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:
Isn’t baking powder mostly baking soda? Maybe the issue is with the amount of leaven and the reactant instead.
wow, nice post, i think i prefer
– mix of baking powder + soda
– mix of sugar
– chilled dough
which is essentially New York Times Chocolate Chips Cookie which i have tried in below post
http://www.dishwithvivien.com/2012/10/recipe-3-chocolate-chips-cookie-recipes/
Regarding the 2 types of flour… Bread flour and cake flour ‘cancel each other out’. Bread flour has more proteins that yield a chewier, tougher products (like bread). Cake flour yields a tender product (like cake). In fact, if you use 50% bread flour and 50% cake flour, you have 100% all-purpose flour.
-Tips from the bakery 😉
this ist so cool!! thank you so much, really great!
now I know how to do it right 😀
With eight children and twelve grandchildren I have baked a lot of chocolate chip cookies. We use equal amounts of white and brown sugar. We also use equal amounts of vegetable shortening and butter. On humid days you need to add about an extra 1/4 c. to 1/2 c. flour per normal batch of cookies. We almost always quadruple the Nestle Toll House Cookie recipe.
Happy baking.
Great post! I prefer big, thick, chewy cookies. Mmm-mm.
I think I like #3 I am going to try them. I will let you know . Thanks
Thanks for this. I use half white sugar and half brown sugar, as well as both baking powder and baking soda. Why? Because that is how my ex did it, and he made awesome chocolate chip cookies, and mine seem to turn out good. But, I will have to make some of mine now to compare with all the ones you listed to see how they measure-up. I might end up changing my recipe.
Interesting experiment you did with cookie recipe to get the various results. I find everyone differs with what they expect out of a choc chip cookie because there are dunkers of cookies who expect very different results. As a previous owner of a very successful cookie business It took me several months to get the right combination of ingredients and technique to get the results I wanted and I never had a complaint. The cookies were thick (not too) and very, very,chocolate in every bite. I preferred Hershey’s chocolate chips because there superior and they offer semi-sweet and special dark as an unbeatable combo. I always chilled my cookie dough before baking and used parchment paper. My convection oven cookies came out better than my conventional oven because the browning was different. The texture was the same though. I used baking powder and baking soda and extra Lg eggs also. A very important tip is you have to know if your baking powder and baking soda is good. Testing with vinegar and water works. I would go up against Debbie Field’s cookies anyday! I had the customers who told me so!
Wow, what an amazing project! I always wondered exactly how much of a difference adding/removing/adjusting certain ingredients would affect a particular food item, and this answered it for me 🙂 I really like how thorough you were with the details of each group.
I’m willing to eat any type of chocolate cookie, but my favorite would definitely be soft and chewy ones!
This is wonderful!!
In your future experiments, will you try various baking sheets? I’ve noticed a difference between my light and dark ones.
Also, what difference to you think a home oven makes versus a professional oven? There is a bakery down the street from me that has wonderfully thick cookies. They also sell the dough, so I’m going to buy it to compare their dough in my oven versus their dough in their oven.
Thanks!!!!
Jennifer
I follow the recipe on the Nestle package, but since I love brown sugar, I always use DARK brown sugar (3/4 cup) along with the white. I also remove the cookies from the oven JUST before they look done, then let them finish cooking on the pan for a for about 2 minutes before I remove them to the rack. If I wait til they’re baked, they’re always too dry. I’m going to try the cornstarch.