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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 chocolate chip cookie recipes work 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 one key thing to see its effect and photographing the results for you. Be sure to check out my free Cookie Customization Guide to truly perfect your cookies!
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.
Hello, i have a question, i already made my cookies but they dont spread, i mean if i take the dough directly with my spoon and bake it they just dont spread so i need to crush them in the baking tray until they get my desired size. can you help me, why this is happening to me?
How do I make these Gluten Free
Does gluten free flour mess them up? I made them according to the Crisco recipe & they spread out to be thin & burnt on the edges. I’m going to try your recipe tomorrow.
I always wanted to try your cookie recipe and tips, and todays is that day. I choose the “only brown sugar” because of the texture, shape and flavour. I’m amazed with the results. I added some clementine zest, pecans and dark chocolate chips insted of milk chocolate. They came out perfect! Soft in the center and delicately crunchy in the board, roundish, and the flavour is sensational! Thanks for that! A lot!
Thoughts on turning them into Chocolate chocolate chip cookies? My thought was to swap from Cocoa Powder for the flour at a 1:1 swap. Have you done this? Any texture considerations? Would you use one of the above alternates in conjunction with the swap?
I use the control recipe basics Baking soda, really soft unsalted butter, vanilla, salt but with 1-1/4 cup flour, all white sugar that spends about a minute in a blender on high and add 2 tablespoons of dark molasses. And Chilled. even if it is only a couple hours helps
Hello! This is a fantastic post. Judging from the comments, it looks as though it was posted to your page sometime in 2013. I was curious whether you ever did a “part 2” like you mentioned several times in the comments that you would do?
Thanks for all your hard work!
the raw dough tastes amazing, baking the cookies right after making the dough though wasn’t a good idea and I didn’t like them at all. they were way too dry and not soft at all. Chilling the dough and making smaller portions really helped though!
Thank you!! I’ve always wanted my cookies crumbly but most recipes make the chewy type with no information how to make them crumbly. Your article is very informative!
Hi Tessa, these cookies are amazing! Curious question – I’m wanting to make a BIG chocolate chip cookie for my daughters birthday using this recipe (she loves them). Just wondering if I spread the dough in a 12″ pizza pan, would you bake it for the same amount of time as a batch of cookies or increase the baking time to 15–20 mins? Thank you!
Love these cookies.
Hi Tessa, Bless you. You have answered all my questions about what it takes to make the best chocolate chip cookie. Your time and effort has been thanked by many. What a difference you have made in many people lives. I applaud you. A mkillion thanks.