Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

These are soft, chewy chocolate chip cookies with golden edges, made with 1 cup of butter, brown and white sugar, 2 1/4 cups of flour and 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips. The dough needs no chilling. Mix, scoop and bake at 350°F for 9 to 11 minutes, and you have 24 cookies in about 30 minutes.

The one thing to get right is the moment you take them out. Pull the tray while the centers still look a little underdone. They finish on the hot sheet and stay soft for days instead of turning crisp by morning.

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Butter, Sugar and Flour Amounts for 24 Cookies

• Butter: 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted, softened
• Sugars: 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar and 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• Eggs and vanilla: 2 large eggs and 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• Dry: 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Chocolate: 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips or chopped chocolate
• Optional: flaky sea salt for the tops
• Oven: 350°F (175°C), two lined baking sheets

Measure the flour with the spoon-and-level method: spoon it into the cup and sweep off the top. Scooping straight from the bag packs it down, and that extra flour is the most common reason homemade cookies come out dry and domed.

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Why Three Parts Brown Sugar to Two Parts White

The sugars in this dough sit at 3/4 cup packed brown to 1/2 cup granulated, a 3 to 2 ratio. Brown sugar carries molasses, which holds moisture and gives the chew. Granulated sugar helps the cookies spread a little and crisp at the rim.

Shift the balance and the texture follows. More white sugar gives thinner, crunchier cookies. All brown sugar gives soft, darker, more cake-like ones. For a nutty, toffee flavor, brown the butter first and let it cool before creaming, or bake my brown butter chocolate chip cookies, which are built around it.

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Creaming and Mixing the Cookie Dough

Start with butter that is soft enough to take a fingerprint but still feels cool. Butter that looks shiny or greasy has gone too far, and the cookies will spread flat. Beat it with both sugars on medium speed for 2 to 3 minutes, until light and fluffy. That beating puts air into the dough, so do not cut it short.

Beat in the eggs and vanilla just until combined. Whisk the flour, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl, then add them on low speed and stop as soon as no dry streaks remain. Fold in the chocolate by hand with a spatula. Real vanilla is worth it here, because there is nothing else in the dough to cover a weak flavor.

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Scooping and the 9 to 11 Minute Window

Divide the dough into 24 even balls, a scant 1/4 cup each, and set them about 2 inches apart. A cookie scoop keeps them the same size, so they finish at the same time. Bake in batches if the sheets get crowded. Add a pinch of flaky sea salt on top before baking if you like a salty edge against the chocolate.

Bake for 9 to 11 minutes. They are ready when the rims are lightly golden and the centers look puffed, pale and a little wet. Wait for the tops to brown and you lose the soft middle. Leave them on the sheet for 5 to 10 minutes, where they set and settle, then move them to a rack.

Let the baking sheet cool before the next batch goes on. Dough placed on a hot sheet starts melting before it bakes and spreads into thin cookies.

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Chill the Dough or Bake It Right Away?

You do not have to chill this dough, and on a weeknight I never do. Baked straight away, the cookies come out slightly flatter, with chewy middles and crisp rims.

If you have time, 30 minutes to 24 hours in the fridge changes them. Cold dough spreads less, so the cookies bake up thicker, and the longer rest gives a deeper, more caramel flavor. Chilled dough may need an extra minute in the oven.

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How This Dough Differs From Toll House

The flour, butter, eggs, baking soda and chips match the Toll House recipe on the chip bag. The changes are small and they all push toward soft and chewy: 1/2 cup of white sugar instead of 3/4, double the vanilla, half the salt, and a 350°F oven instead of 375°F. The lower heat gives the centers time to set before the edges darken.

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Flat, Cakey or Dry Chocolate Chip Cookies

• Spread too thin: the butter was too warm, the sheet was hot, or the oven runs hot. Chill the scooped dough for 30 minutes and check your oven with a thermometer.
• Dry or crumbly: too much flour or too long in the oven. Spoon and level the flour and pull the tray while the centers still look wet.
• Thick and cakey: usually packed flour, or butter so cold it never creamed properly.
• Too pale: give them another 30 seconds to 1 minute, but take them out before the tops brown.

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Freezing Dough Balls and Keeping Cookies Soft

Scoop the dough onto a parchment-lined tray, freeze until firm, then move the balls to a bag or container for up to 3 months. Bake them straight from frozen at 350°F, adding 1 to 2 minutes. I keep a bag in the freezer so a warm cookie is never more than 15 minutes away.

Baked cookies keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days. Tuck a slice of bread in with them: the cookies take moisture from it and stay soft. To bring one back to fresh-baked, warm it in the microwave for 8 to 10 seconds.

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Ways to Change Up the Chips

Swap part of the semi-sweet chips for chopped dark chocolate, or mix milk and dark chunks for contrast; chopped bars melt into flat pools where chips keep their shape. For bigger pockets of chocolate, try chocolate chunk cookies. Chopped walnuts go well too, as in these chocolate chip walnut cookies.

For a gluten-free batch, almond flour chocolate chip cookies bake up lighter. Chopped cherries turn them pink and fruity in maraschino cherry chocolate chip cookies. And when you want the same flavors in one pan, bake chocolate chip cookie pie or chocolate chip blondies.

If you bake these, tell me in the comments which chips you used and whether you chilled the dough.