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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:
Hi Tessa – stumbled on part II while researching the effect of substituting butter for shortening in a GF chocolate chip cookie recipe (author warned not to do it, but I have no shortening in the house and the time for cookies is NOW!). Thank you for giving me some specific steps to take in order to preserve the height/spread/texture of a much loved recipe. I would like to share your Guide, and it makes sense to start with part I, but I noticed that part I does not appear to have links to parts II, III, and IV! Hoping you might add those for convenience of folks who start with part I. Many thanks!
Thank you so much for this insight in cookie science.
I’m a big inner baker and all the different recipes are overwhelming. And since I have noting to compare them with since I have not grown up with grandads cookies or families recipes it’s hard to find out what is a good recipe or not. And your post makes all the difference in understanding what i’m doing.
Your amazing
Hello Tessa and thank you for your advice on ‘The Ultimate Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies’, however I’m very confused as I was just reading your advice found on the link below and the recipe you give is quite different to the one you have here. For one thing, here you don’t use baking powder. Also, in this recipe you use all-purpose flour only, in the other recipe you use plain flour and bread flour… In this recipe you use 1 large egg whereas in the other you use 2 large eggs plus 1 egg yolk, etc. The difference in the batch is just 2 cookies… Could you kindly clarify. Thank you. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinkadvice/11386377/The-science-behind-the-perfect-cookie.html
Hi Mary, unfortunately it looks like they’ve copy and pasted a lot of my content from different articles and put it all together out of context. Here in the Ultimate Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies post I used a simplification of the Nestle Toll House recipe as my control to test different tweaks and changes. From here, I discovered what my favorite tweaks were and created my Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe: https://handletheheat.com/ultimate-chocolate-chip-cookies/
Thanks for a great article. Is there a difference if you scoop you cookies first and then chill the dough?
Thank you for helping me make the Ultimate Chocolate Chip cookie! I read all the comments and ended up in making the NY Times recipe on this page since I needed a lot of cookies. I added 4 teaspoons corn starch to the recipe but otherwise carefully measured and did exactly what the recipe said. I now understand that it’s important to cream the butter and sugars really well, to use both baking powder and baking soda, and to chill the dough first. I was in a hurry to see how they turned out so I chilled 6 cookies while the oven was warming up. I rolled each cookie into a ball before chilling and they came out perfectly uniform. I’m delighted!!
Hello i tried the both recipe with bake powder and soda,i did not get the end result of a flatter cookie with crispy edges and softer middle the first time,so i tried it again and this time i partially flattened the cookies before baking and they turned out more like they should have..is that what is needed to do is flatten the cookies before baking..tks much for sharing
David from Hudson WI
Can I add more flour to betty crocker chocolate chip cookie mix??will it make it puffier and thick??
Interesting results. I work in institutions with military recipes. For me, their cookie recipes are not only out of order, but if followed to the T – the dough is overly sticky and the cookies are of poor quality. Over time, I’ve messed with the recipes, putting the ingredients in the order they should be in (creaming method style), reduce baking soda from, for instance, 1 t. to 3/4 t. add 1 heaping t. baking powder (which is not in the recipe), and increase flour until the dough barely stops sticking to my finger tip when touched. I then, using a commercial convection oven, reduce the temperature from 300’F to between 250’F and 275’F and bake for about 12 minutes low fan. I rotate all of the pans and turn them, baking them for an additional ~ 12 more minutes until done. The results are a soft cookie in the center, with a crispy edge that most people love.
I rarely leave comments – but your ccc recipe with the melted butter deserves serious praise! I moved to Europe a little more than 10 yrs ago, and have struggle do on make good cookie sheet very since (maybe because of difference in dairy and so on). Anyway – now I make the best cookies ever, thanks to you! Family, friends and colleagues rave when I make them! Thank you! The best crispy AND chewy cookies ever! I will never use any other recipe! Pure perfection!
So happy to hear that!! I’ve heard from quite a few ex-pats living in Europe that cookies don’t turn out the same. I’m really curious as to why exactly that might be!!
this is my favoriteeee recipe everybody loves it and i love it thank u so much
Hi Tessa — I bookmarked this article a few years ago and came back it today after baking my cc cookies. Maybe you can help me with my question. I made cc cookies today using the same recipe I have always used, and I like it but don’t love it. I don’t love it only because the cookies are crisp rather than soft. And I do mean crisp rather than hard or crunchy. Another way to describe them is that when I try to break one in half, it crumbles rather than snaps. I’d like them to be hard to softish rather than crisp. I bake them low and slow, 300f for 20 min. I am wondering if there is too much sugar (1cup brown and 1/2 cup white), and it is crystalizing rather than melting? Any thoughts? Thank you.
Congrats about your article! I think is awesome…but i have some concerns about it i hope you dont mind help me if you can. In my country we have two differents kinds of flour…with and without baking powder…what kind do you use for this recipe?, i am so excited about this guide and i want to do it the best as posible!!! Thank u