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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:
I recently replaced all the butter with crisco (vegetable shortening) this produced a chewier and softer cookie, they were also airier and taller than the normal recipie. I recommend, if you are looking for these results. Have fun baking! 🙂
Thanks for your post! My mother in law made the best chocolate chip cookies, and they were crunchy and not chewy at all. They exploded with flavor in your mouth, and were so pleasantly crunchy. I have been trying to replicate them since she passed away, unsuccessfully so far. Which of ours is the crunchiest version? I am guessing melted butter…..they look he most like moms.
Kudos!
This is probably the closest recipe I have to your mother-in-law’s, though these are fairly chewy: https://handletheheat.com/2013/10/thin-crispy-chocolate-chip-cookies.html
Love this! I linked to this post today. We used your guide to make our favorite kind of cookies, and I illustrated our favorite recipe for cooking with kids.
http://wedontwriteonmeat.com/recipe-edgars-favorite-chocolate-chip-cookies
Thanks for the great post!
I am going to try 1/4 tsp BP and 1/4tsp BS and 1/2 brown sugar! I can’t wait.
PS Do you sift the flour after you measure? I stink at measuring!
AWESOME science experiment! 🙂
Do you sift your flour? I don’t know whether to trust the ‘pre-sifted’ all-purpose type.
My cookies sometimes come out too ‘cakie’ if I don’t sift – does that make sense to you?
Lots of little sidenotes on my nestle recipe now, thanks!
Going to try 1c brown sugar + 1/2 c sugar, chilled 24 hr, and 2 tsp cornstarch.
Also, I noticed that my alternative chocolate chip cookie recipe from a flour package, that I use interchangeably with tollhouse, has only 1 egg but identical otherwise… must not matter as much as I thought. I used to panic when I only had 1 egg, now I guess I don’t have to half the recipe anymore.
thanks a lot for the comparisons and pictures it really helps, they look great!
Hey! I’m from Uruguay and here chocolate chip cookies are not a classic, the only “control” badge I have are some industrial ones from the supermarket that are really really crunchy and dry (hurts my gums), so I don’t know what’s normal and what’s not… in your opinion, which are the best? I’d like to bake some but don’t want a fiasco or a super hard badge no person will eat! Thanks in advanced! Really nice post
My favorite recipe is this one: https://handletheheat.com/2013/10/ultimate-chocolate-chip-cookies.html
This is an awesome comparison. Now I’m hungry for cookies. Mmmm….cookies…
I use cold butter, directly out of the fridge, and frozen chocolate chips. Also use equal amounts of white and brown sugar. Cookie dough is cold as it goes into oven, cookies don’t spread and they stay chewie.
Your a “Kitchen Scientist”…always wanted to experiment but didn’t have time…glad you did it ! Keep it coming!
super glad I stumbled upon this. It explains a lot of things. I keep wondering why I haven’t been able to duplicate the recipe that my mom had many years ago. I think I have it figured out now. I think I will be making a lot more chocolate chip cookies and with results more to my liking. thank you.