The best chocolate chip cookie recipe

This is the best chocolate chip cookie recipe that everyone need in their baking repertoire for rainy Sunday afternoons! Crispy and chewy, gooey and buttery, sweet but very well balanced with some sea salt on top.

Best thing in the recipe is that no special equipment is needed and it comes together in 15 minutes then it’s just a bit of resting time, bake and enjoy!

First let’s start with some important notes regarding the ingredients of the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe

• read the recipe carefully
• avoid using substitutes unless aware of how to fully reformulate the recipe in order to keep the balance in texture as well as flavours
• measure your ingredients with the help of a digital kitchen scale

For the cookie

1. Butter: Use always unsalted as you want to be in control of the quantity of the salt. I am using 82% fat content butter in all my recipes. In this recipe butter either needs to be on room temperature so soft enough to be able to cream with the rest of the ingredients or as I suggest make brown butter first. Brown butter gives the most delicious deepness to the flavours, I highly recommend that you do not skip this extra step
2. Sugar: For the best results I recommend using a combination of white and brown sugar in this chocolate chip cookie recipe. Their mixture contributes to both taste and texture. If you want to learn about the different types of sugar and how to use them in baking, please read my article in here
3. Vanilla extract: Avoid using artificial vanilla. There are several great brands for fine, pure vanilla, I use Nielsen massey which I love and really recommend
4. Egg: Room temperature as always, 1 egg is enough as we do not want a cake like texture
5. Flour: I find the best cookie recipe needs a mixture of soft (pastry) and hard (bread) flour, they both offer different benefits in terms of texture, alternatively use AP flour If you want to be a Pro when it comes to deciding what type of flour to use in your baking, please read my article in here
6. Salt: An essential ingredient in most of the dessert recipes. Balances flavour and enhances other ingredients, especially in desserts with chocolate it is a must. Try to sprinkle the baked cookies with some extra sea salt!
7. Baking soda: Makes to cookie slightly risen, tender and chewy
8. Chocolate: Use high cocoa content, high quality chocolate which you would anyway enjoy eating on its own and avoid using “baking chocolate”. I am using Valrhona in almost all my recipes

Now let’s continue with my Top 5 tips regarding the technique of making the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe

It’s a super simple recipe and don’t have to overthink however there are some important notes worth considering to master your Chocolate Chip cookie baking!

1. How not to overmix cookie dough

It’s very important that when you make chocolate chip cookie that you do not overmix the ingredients or it might turn out into a cake like texture. While creaming butter and sugar, it should be mixed only for a minute or two until fully combined and slightly increased in volume. Same applies for mixing the egg in, do not overmix. And finally when adding the dry ingredients it should be fold in with a Rubber spatula just until combined. The final mixture should be easy to handle and form balls out of it however if your butter was too warm, the mixture might be a but runny. Do not add more flour to it, instead place the cookie dough into the fridge for a few minutes.

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2. What chocolate to use for this Chocolate chip cookie recipe

Truth is, chocolate chips are usually questionable in quality therefore unless you can buy good quality chocolate chip, I recommend to use your favorite chocolate and chop it into small pieces! Key is to use good quality semi-sweet chocolate that you enjoy eating anyway. In almost all my recipes I use Valrhona that is silky, not too sweet and has the best attributes to bake with it.

3. Why chill cookie dough before baking

You will have to chill the cookie dough for at least 1 hour and the main reason behind it is to avoid over-spread, sad looking, flat cookies. The warmer the dough the easier it will spread in the oven and our aim is to achieve thick, crackly surface, fudge cookies. If you don't have an hour to wait, try 15min in the freezer. Regarding the cookies spreading too much or not enough in the oven, there are a couple of trick you can fix the issue, see the next point.

4. How to achieve crackly surface on Chocolate chip cookies

First of all please do not use substitutes or reduce the sugar in this recipe as it might result in a completely different texture than my chocolate chip cookies. The sweetness of the cookies is balanced with added salt in the cookie dough and also with salt flakes after baking.

Beyond having a good recipe, it is also about the baking technique. Your chocolate chip cookie dough will naturally spread a bit in the oven, should not spread too much if you chilled it before baking and pre-heated the oven. The cookies will also puff up due to the baking soda added.

Apply the circular trick:

After 11 minutes of baking time take the tray out and grab a large cookie cutter or any round shape thing in your kitchen (slightly larger than the the size of the cookies in the oven). Hold the cookie cutter and make circular movement around the almost baked cookies which will slightly tighten the cookies, make them perfectly round shape and the movement also encourages crinkle forming on top. Incredible easy trick and works! Put the tray back to the oven and repeat the circular movement at the end of the baking time, if necessary.

Apply the tray bang trick

Tray bang trick is around Instagram (it is not my initial idea) , that also encourages crinkle formation on the top of the cookies. It also helps if for some reason your cookies would not spread. Apply similarly as above.

5. How to bake chocolate chip cookies

First of all how not to bake chocolate chip cookies? Never bake them without appropriate chilling time which is minimum one hour, the more the better. Why? Because we want to avoid pancake like cookies!

There is one important trick to bake fudge chocolate cookies and it is not to over bake them. I know it is worrying to take them out when they look under baked, but believe me, at the end of the baking time they won’t look done but they are indeed. Let them rest on the parchment paper for a few minutes then carefully remove them to a Cooling rack. They will be very fragile straight out of the oven so be careful while moving them.

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Do you enjoy baking cookies as much as I do? Why not check out some of my other cookie recipes!

Brownie cookie recipe

Pumpkin cookie recipe

Ying Yang cookie recipe

Sourdough discard brownie cookie recipe

Now let´s see the recipe of the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie!

Chocolate chip cookie

An ideal balance between chewy, crispy, gooey texture loaded with chocolate.

4.97 from 28 votes

Print Pin Rate

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Cook Time: 1 hour

Waiting Time: 1 hour

Total Time: 2 hours

Servings: 12

Calories: 288kcal

Author: Kata

Equipment

• ▢
  Electric hand mixer
• ▢
  Digital scale
• ▢
  Rubber spatula
• ▢
  Cooling rack

Ingredients

• ▢ 140 g Unsalted butter to make brown butter
• ▢ 75 g Brown sugar
• ▢ 75 g Granulated sugar
• ▢ 1 Egg
• ▢ 100 g AP flour
• ▢ 100 g Bread flour can be replaced with AP
• ▢ 1 teaspoon Salt
• ▢ 1 teaspoon Baking soda
• ▢ 200 g Semi sweet chocolate good quality eg. Valrhona

Metric - US Customary

US customary cup measurement is an indicative figure only. Measure the ingredients with a digital scale by weight (gram). Baking is art but also science which requires precision and accuracy.

Instructions

• For the best results make 125 g brown butter using 140 g butter as per step 2. If want to skip this step, please jump onto step 3.
• Heat butter in a saucepan on medium heat, first it will melt then it will foam. It is ready when the white bits on the bottom of the pan will turn into golden brown and it has a nutty smell. Make sure you carefully watch it throughout the process, stir regularly and remove from the heat before it starts burning. Let it cool to room temperature.
• With an Electric hand mixer mix the browned butter and sugar together just until well combined.
• Mix in the egg, do not overmix or it will become rather like a cake, not cookie.
• Sift the two different kinds of flour, salt and baking soda together then add the flour mixture into the dough, fold with Rubber spatula
• Before the flour mixture fully combined into the dough add in the chocolate chunks or substitute chocolate with hazelnut, almond, pistachio etc.
• Divide the dough into 10 equal balls (using a Digital scale is handy, approx. 70g each) and place them on parchment paper leaving enough space between them to spread. Do not soften the surface of the ball, in fact try to keep it as rough as possible for a nice, crackly surface. Let them rest in the fridge for an hour or two.
• Pre-heat oven to 180 C / 356°F
• Remove the cookie balls from the fridge and Bake the cookies as per following: At 11 minutes take the tray out and bang the tray to the kitchen counter and apply circular movement around them with the help of a cookie cutter (as explained in the Tips section above). Continue to bake for 5 more minutes. Overall the cookies require 16 minutes baking in 180C. The cookies might look under baked however they will set as they cool
• Sprinkle them with salt flakes to enhance taste

Nutrition

Calories: 288kcal | Carbohydrates: 31g | Protein: 3g | Fat: 17g | Saturated Fat: 10g | Cholesterol: 40mg | Sodium: 352mg | Potassium: 129mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 19g | Vitamin A: 320IU | Calcium: 30mg | Iron: 2mg

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