The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe EVER
There are few things more comforting in life than walking into your house with the smell of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies in the air. I think the only thing probably equally as comforting is the smell of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls. When I was growing up, my mom and paternal grandmother who lived with us were the best cooks and made so many amazing foods for our family, but they rarely, if ever, baked. I never experienced the joy of homemade chocolate chip cookies until I started baking them myself.
I actually have a really funny story from my first time making them. I was in High School, I was still learning how to do basic cooking, while following a recipe. You could call me a little bit “kitchen stupid” at that time. My understanding of how ingredients interacted with each other was literally zero. I was blindly reading and following a recipe and sometimes it worked, and sometimes as in my first batch of chocolate chip cookies, it didn’t. In this case, when I was reading the recipe, I completely and utterly misread the measurement for baking soda. I don’t have any idea how, but I read teaspoon as cups. I’m pretty sure the recipe I was following at the time called for 1 teaspoon of baking soda. I happened to add 1 CUP of baking soda instead. The saddest part is, the cookies came out of the oven as the most BEAUTIFUL cookies, thanks to all that wonderful baking soda. My hopes were so high! When I took that first bite though, oh my goodness, the way it tasted, was the complete opposite. Obviously the only thing you could taste was baking soda. To this day I am still super sensitive to the flavor of baking soda in my food. For example, I can’t drink club soda that has baking soda in it. (A lot of club soda’s have baking soda, you have to read the ingredients list).
It’s kind if embarrassing to think about how bad that first batch was. But luckily that experience taught me the value in properly reading the recipe and portioning out ingredients accordingly. I don’t usually measure when it comes to cooking things on the stove, its more by eye and by gut, the way my mother, and grandmothers cook. So measuring things out for posting onto this blog has definitely been a new experience for me. But when it comes to baked goods, most of the time it’s very important to have the proportions correct. Baking is the most scientific type of cooking that at least I have experienced. The rise, the browning, the texture, the tenderness, the flavor, all of this is scientific.There are very specific formulas that you follow, that yield consistent results. Once you understand how certain ingredients interact with each other in the oven, it becomes easier to experiment and develop your own recipes and variations of existing recipes.
This particular chocolate chip cookie recipe I found on Pinterest (where I find all my cooking inspiration) after I got married when I was living in “middle of nowhere” Indiana. We used to hang out with our friends there quite frequently, and I’m not the kind of person to go to somebody’s place empty-handed. I needed to have something to take, and cookies seemed like a good bet. These cookies became such a hit that soon our friends would be requesting that above all else, I bring these cookies. When I moved to Florida, it took some time to get settled, but I started baking these cookies again. Sometimes my husband will ask me to make them so he can take them to work, to help ease the stress of a big meeting that he is running. At least that’s what he tells me ;-). I’m sure it’s more just the fact that he wants the cookies at work =). It’s such a simple recipe. And over the last 2 years I have discovered how forgiving this recipe is. See, even though I like to pride myself in my cooking and baking skills, apparently my recipe reading skills are still as lacking as the time I misread about the baking soda. Now you can’t mess up the proportions that bad, but if you use room temperature butter instead of melted, or add 1 cup of butter instead of 3/4 cups, or add more chocolate chips because your hand accidentally slipped and you poured more than you were anticipating, or you can’t find your measuring cup, so you just eye the sugar as best as you can, (these are all mistakes or “variations” I have made) the cookies will all come out looking different, and each time you will wonder what it is you did wrong(??) but they will all still come out delicious in their own way! That being said, I still recommend following the recipe!
Now onto the recipe! It’s as simple as it gets, and if you have baked in the past, you probably already have all the ingredients at home.
First you start out with putting your flour, baking soda, and salt into a bowl.
After that, it’s up to you, you can either sift all the dry ingredients together, or just whisk it together like I did. I don’t usually sift, I never noticed any benefit. But its your choice. Sifting definitely wont hurt. You just want to make sure they are all already pre-mixed before we add them to the wet ingredients.
Next in your stand mixer or in a separate bowl. Add your brown sugar, white sugar and melted butter. You don’t need a stand mixer for this recipe, everything here can be done with a whisk and then spatula or spoon. I just like to use my stand mixer for convenience.
You will notice that the butter and sugar wont really be combining homogeneously, that’s okay if there’s a thin layer of melted butter on top we just want to get the mixing process started. Once we go through the next step it will come together nicely.
Now we add the egg and egg yolk along with the vanilla. Now we mix/whisk until mixture becomes thick and creamy, lightened in color and has clearly all combined. This is what mine looked like. It was quite thick when it was mixing.
Now that all the wet ingredients are mixed, we add the in the dry ingredients that we have already prepared. If you are doing this by hand, this is when you would want to switch from a whisk to a spatula or spoon. Mix everything until it is JUST combined. When making things like cookie or cake, you never want to over mix the flour. It develops a gluten and it ruins the crumby texture that is expected for cookies and cakes.
The last step is to add in all the chocolate chips. If you are using a mixer you may want to mix the chips in by hand with a spoon. Or you can pulse the mixer on the lowest speed to mix them in. (By pulsing, I mean, turning on and off to the lowest speed, this helps to not break the chips). Stop as soon as everything as been combined.
Line your baking sheet with parchment paper. This is baking sheet that I use: Nordic Ware Natural Aluminum Commercial Baker’s Half Sheet
Bake your cookies in a 325 deg oven for 15-17 minutes. I baked mine for 16 and then came out perfect. You want the edges to just start to become golden brown. Let them cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes.
After cooking on the baking sheet, transfer your cookies to a cooling rack to finish cooling. These are the cooling racks I use: Baker’s Secret Nonstick Cooling Rack, Set of 2
And that’s it! Your cookies are done! The hardest part is resisting the urge to eat one right away as soon as they’ve come out of the oven! I highly recommend at least waiting until they have cooled on the rack for at least 5-10 minutes. After that time they will still be nice and warm, but you wont risk burning your tongue from the hot chocolate chips!
Let me know if you give this recipe a try in the comments! You can tag me on instagram @saltyoversweet! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, or more so, as much as my husband does! (I’m not as big of a sweets person, I LOVE making them, but not so much eating them). =)
- 2 cups - All Purpose Flour (I use unbleached)
- 1/2 Teaspoon - Baking Soda
- 1/2 Teaspoon - Salt
- 3/4 cup - Unsalted Butter - melted but not hot - let it come to room temperature
- 1 cup - Brown Sugar
- 1/2 cup - White Sugar
- 1 Tablespoon - Vanilla Extract (The real stuff! No artificial Vanilla)
- 1 - Whole large Egg (Yolk and White)
- 1 - Egg Yolk (from a large egg)
- 1 1/2 cups - Semisweet Chocolate Chips
- 3/4 cup - Dark Chocolate Chips
- Preheat Oven to 325 Degrees
- Mix Flour, Baking Soda, and Salt together in a bowl - whisk or sift, your choice. Set this aside.
- Mix Melted Butter, White Sugar and Brown sugar together in a bowl with a whisk or in your stand mixer until combined as best as you can get it. (It wont combine completely yet)
- Add Vanilla, whole egg, and egg yolk. Whisk this in your bowl, or mix in your stand mixer until its lighter in color and creamy looking.
- Add the pre-prepared flour mixture. Stir on low in the stand mixer, or mix by hand with a spatula or spoon until just barely combined.
- Add the 2 varieties of chocolate chips, and mix in your bowl with a spatula or spoon, or pulse on low with your stand mixer (see blog post for more details on that).
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and scoop dough onto it with a cookie scoop.
- Bake cookies in the preheated oven for 15-17 minutes, every oven is different, you need to judge for yourself when they are ready. You want the edges to be a light golden brown.
- When you take them out of the oven, let them cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, and then transfer them to a cooling rack to finish cooling.
- Once they have cooled on the baking rack for at least 10 minutes they will be ready to eat. They will still be warm, but the chocolate chips wont burn your tongue. If you are cooling them for storage, let them cool on the baking rack for an hour before packing. The chocolate will still be melty for at least another day so keep this in mind. If you want the chocolate to set, you can put the cookies in the fridge for 10-15 minutes so the chocolate hardens again. (makes storage easier and less messy)
- *For flatter soft cookies you can use room temperature soft butter instead of melted butter, it sounds counterintuitive, but the cookies produced this way, result in flatter cookies. (Discovered by accident)
- *This recipe can be easily made dairy free by substituting Earth Balance butter for the regular butter. Be sure to cut back on the salt though, since Earth Balance Butter already is salted.
- *I have not tried this recipe with gluten-free flour, if you do let me know in the comments.
- *The 2 different types of chocolate really add a nice subtle complexity to the cookie. If you are ever baking chocolate chip cookies I would always recommend adding more than one variety of chocolate chip.
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