With 11 million page views and counting since 2013, these super soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies are the most popular cookie recipe on my website. Melted butter, more brown sugar than white sugar, cornstarch, and an extra egg yolk guarantee the absolute chewiest chocolate chip cookie texture. And you don’t even need a mixer!
Reader Adrienne commented: “These are the best cookies I’ve ever had. Incredible. Don’t cut corners or you’ll miss out. Do everything she says and you’re in for the best cookies of your life. ★★★★★“
There are thousands of chocolate chip cookies recipes out there. Everyone has their favorite and this one is mine. Just a glance at the hundreds of reviews in the comments section tells me that this recipe is a favorite for many others too! In fact, if you asked me which recipe to keep in your apron pocket, my answer would be this one. (In addition to a classic cut-out sugar cookies and flaky pie crust, of course!) Just read the comments on a post in our Facebook group. These cookies are loved… and, warning: they disappear FAST.
The recipe is also included in two of my published cookbooks (in Sally’s Baking Addiction, I swap chocolate chips for M&Ms/chocolate chips combo).
Why Are These My BEST Chocolate Chip Cookies?
- The chewiest of chewy and the softest of soft.
- Extra thick just like my favorite peanut butter cookies!
- Bakery-style BIG.
- Exploding with chocolate.
Back in 2013, I tested this cookie recipe over and over again to make sure they’re absolutely perfect. I still have a big space in my heart (and stomach) for these Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies. Today’s recipe is similar, but I increased the chewiness factor.
Reader A.Phillips commented: “Look no further. This is it. This is the perfect cookie recipe. Follow her instructions exactly and the cookies will be chewy and amazing. … These are the most perfect cookies I’ve made and I’ve tried at least 20 different recipes. ★★★★★“
You can make them with chocolate chips or chocolate chunks.
Key Ingredients for Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
The cookie dough is made from your standard cookie ingredients: flour, leavener, salt, sugar, butter, egg, and vanilla. It’s the ratios and temperature of those ingredients that make this recipe stand out from the rest.
- Melted butter: Melted butter produces the chewiest cookies. It can, however, make your baked cookies greasy, so I made sure there is enough flour to counteract that. And using melted butter is also the reason you don’t need a mixer to make these cookies, just like these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and M&M cookie bars.
- More brown sugar than white sugar: More brown sugar than white sugar: The moisture in brown sugar promises an extra soft and chewy baked cookie. White granulated sugar is still necessary, though. It’s dry and helps the cookies spread. A little bit of spread is a good thing.
- Cornstarch: Why? Cornstarch gives the cookies that ultra soft consistency we all love. Plus, it helps keep the cookies beautifully thick. We use the same trick when making shortbread cookies.
- Egg yolk: Another way to promise a super chewy chocolate chip cookie is to use an extra egg yolk. The extra egg yolk adds richness, soft tenderness, and binds the dough. You will need 1 egg + 1 egg yolk, at room temperature. See the recipe Notes for how to bring your eggs to room temperature quickly.
The dough will be soft and the chocolate chips may not stick because of the melted butter. Just keep stirring it; I promise it will come together. Because of the melted butter and extra egg yolk, the slick dough doesn’t even look like normal cookie dough! Trust the process…
The most important step is next.
2 Major Success Tips
1. Chill the dough. Chilling the cookie dough is so important in this recipe! Unless you want the cookies to spread into a massive cookie puddle, chilling the dough is mandatory here. It allows the ingredients to settle together after the mixing stage but most importantly: cold dough results in thicker cookies. Cover the cookie dough and chill for at least 2–3 hours and even up to 3–4 days.
After chilling, the dough is quite solid, so let it sit at room temperature for 10 minutes (to soften it up slightly) before shaping. (No time to chill? Make these soft & chewy chocolate chip cookie bars instead!)
- Further reading: How to Prevent Cookies from Spreading
2. Roll the cookie dough balls extra tall. After the dough has chilled, scoop out a ball of dough that’s 3 Tablespoons for XL cookies or about 2 heaping Tablespoons (1.75 ounces or 50g) for medium/large cookies. I usually use this medium cookie scoop and make it a heaping scoop. But making the cookie dough balls tall and textured, rather than wide and smooth, is my tried-and-true trick that results in thick and textured-looking cookies. We’re talking thick bakery-style cookies with wrinkly, textured tops. Your cookie dough should look less like balls and more like, well, lumpy columns, LOL.
Watch the video below to see how I shape them. I also demonstrate how I use a spoon to reshape them during baking if I see they’re spreading too much.
Another Success Tip: When you remove the cookie dough from the refrigerator, the dough may be slightly crumbly. Scooping and then shaping it with warm hands keeps it intact.
Tools I Recommend for This Recipe
I’ve tested many baking tools and these are the exact products I use, trust, and recommend to readers. You’ll need most of these tools when making sugar cookies and snickerdoodles, too!
- Baking Sheets
- Silicone Baking Mats or Parchment Sheets
- Medium Cookie Scoop
- Cooling Racks
- See More: Best Cookie Baking Tools and 8 Best Baking Pans
Can I Freeze This Cookie Dough?
Yes, absolutely. After chilling, sometimes I roll the cookie dough into balls and freeze them in a large zipped-top bag. Then I bake them straight from the freezer, keeping them in the oven for an extra minute. This way you can bake just a couple of cookies whenever the craving hits. (The chewy chocolate chip cookie craving is a hard one to ignore.)
If you’re curious about freezing cookie dough, here’s my How to Freeze Cookie Dough page.
Facebook member Leigh commented: These are the only CC cookies I’ve made for years (and this recipe is how I came to be such a fan of SBA!) This recipe worked great when I lived in Denver and had issues with baking at altitude, and it’s still our favorite now that we’re back at sea level. I usually make 4x-6x batches and freeze tons of cookie balls to bake later.
In Short, Here Are the Secrets to Soft & Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies:
- Cornstarch helps product soft and thick cookies.
- Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie.
- An extra egg yolk increases chewiness.
- Rolling the cookie dough balls to be tall and lumpy instead of wide and smooth gives the cookies a bakery-style textured thickness. It’s a trick we use for cake batter chocolate chip cookies, too.
- Using melted butter (and slightly more flour to counteract the liquid) increases chewiness.
- Chilling the dough results in a thicker cookie. Almost as thick as peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, or their gluten free counterparts, flourless peanut butter oatmeal cookies 🙂
Q: Have you baked a batch before?
Print
Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 12 minutes
- Total Time: 3 hours, 22 minutes
- Yield: 16 XL cookies or 20 medium/large cookies
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These super soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies are the most popular cookie recipe on my website for good reason. Melted butter, more brown sugar than white sugar, cornstarch, and an extra egg yolk guarantee the absolute chewiest chocolate chip cookie texture. The cookie dough is slick and requires chilling prior to shaping the cookies. Review recipe notes before beginning.
Ingredients
- 2 and 1/4 cups (280g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch*
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup (170g) unsalted butter, melted & cooled 5 minutes*
- 3/4 cup (150g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
- 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 and 1/4 cups (225g) semi-sweet chocolate chips or chocolate chunks
Instructions
- Whisk the flour, baking soda, cornstarch, and salt together in a large bowl. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together until no brown sugar lumps remain. Whisk in the egg and egg yolk. Finally, whisk in the vanilla extract. The mixture will be thin. Pour into dry ingredients and mix together with a large spoon or rubber spatula. The dough will be very soft, thick, and appear greasy. Fold in the chocolate chips. The chocolate chips may not stick to the dough because of the melted butter, but do your best to combine them.
- Cover the dough tightly and chill in the refrigerator for at least 2–3 hours or up to 3 days. I highly recommend chilling the cookie dough overnight for less spreading.
- Take the dough out of the refrigerator and allow it to slightly soften at room temperature for 10 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 325°F (163°C). Line large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.
- Using a cookie scoop or Tablespoon measuring spoon, measure 3 scant Tablespoons (about 2 ounces, or 60g) of dough for XL cookies or 2 heaping Tablespoons (about 1.75 ounces, or 50g) of dough for medium/large cookies. Roll into a ball, making sure the shape is taller rather than wide—almost like a cylinder. This helps the cookies bake up thicker. Repeat with remaining dough. Place 8–9 balls of dough onto each cookie sheet.
- Bake the cookies for 12–13 minutes or until the edges are very lightly browned. (XL cookies can take closer to 14 minutes.) The centers will look very soft, but the cookies will continue to set as they cool. Cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, press a few extra chocolate chips into the tops of the warm cookies. This is optional and only for looks. After 10 minutes of cooling on the baking sheets, transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Make Ahead & Freezing Instructions: You can make the cookie dough and chill it in the refrigerator for up to 2–3 days. Allow to come to room temperature then continue with step 5. Baked cookies freeze well for up to 3 months. Unbaked cookie dough balls freeze well for up to 3 months. Bake frozen cookie dough balls for an extra minute, no need to thaw. Read my tips and tricks on how to freeze cookie dough.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Glass Mixing Bowls | Whisk | Wooden Spoon or Rubber Spatula | Baking Sheets | Silicone Baking Mats or Parchment Paper | Medium Cookie Scoop | Cooling Rack
- Cornstarch: If you don’t have cornstarch, you can leave it out. The cookies are still very soft.
- Egg & Egg Yolk: Room temperature egg + egg yolk are best. Typically, if a recipe calls for room temperature or melted butter, it’s good practice to use room temperature eggs as well. To bring eggs to room temperature quickly, simply place the whole eggs into a glass of warm water for 5 minutes.
- Can I add nuts or different add-ins? Yes, absolutely. As long as the total amount of add-ins is around 1 – 1 and 1/4 cups, you can add anything including chopped nuts, M&Ms, white chocolate chips, dried cranberries, chopped peanut butter cups, etc. I love them with 3/4 cup (135g) butterscotch morsels and 1/2 cup (100g) Reese’s Pieces. You could even add 1/2 cup (80g) sprinkles to make a sprinkle chocolate chip cookie.
- Be sure to check out my top 5 cookie baking success tips AND these are my 10 must-have cookie baking tools.
Keywords: chocolate chip cookies
Hye, i made this cookies but onthe bottom they are so greasy and not hard , like it wanna fold when i pick them up
Hi Ati, did you allow the cookies to fully cool? They will still bake up ever so slightly while cooling on the baking sheet before transferring them to a rack. An additional minute or two in the oven will help for next time, too. Or, if you’re interested in a crispier cookie, we recommend our crispy chocolate chip cookies instead.
im australian so we use the metric system, although it would be convenient if everyone put both types of measurements on recipes, i just converted these measurements to metric. i love them so much omg they are literally the best cookies ever
Hi! I was wondering what you would suggest to make these into double chocolate cookies (aka chocolate chocolate chip). I know there are other recipes out there for double chocolate, but this is such a great one that I basically want the same thing, but with added chocolate 😛 Could I just to add cocoa powder to the dough?
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Hi Alyssa! Cocoa powder can be a finicky ingredient so unfortunately it wouldn’t be as easy as adding cocoa powder to the dough — you’d need to play around with other ingredients as well. If you haven’t tried them already, we’d encourage you to try our inside out chocolate chip cookies. Very similar chewy texture!
Wow, what a great blog! I love the way you’ve organized your thoughts and presented your ideas. You have a real gift for writing, and I can’t wait to see more of your work. Keep up the great work!
I am making these this weekend. I have a 20″ x 14 1\2″ cookie sheet. How many cookies should I bake on this?
Hi Stephanie! We recommend baking 8-9 cookies on a sheet at a time. You may be able to fit another cookie or two on your slightly larger sheet, but be careful not to crowd them!
I can not reiterate how much I love these cookies! Sally’s Baking Addiction has been my #1 site for baking for years now, and I’ve gotten friends and family hooked on it too! Thank you, Sally!
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Thank you so much for making and trusting our recipes, Lucy — and for sharing them with others!
I made these from Sally’s Cookie Addiction cookbook and the add-ins I used were from another fave recipe from that book. Pretzel bits, butterscotch chips and dark chocolate chips. So good and I think I like the texture better than the other recipe. The dough is a lot easier to work with also. I accidentally made them with my medium cookie scoop (1.5 tbs), and got 32 cookies.
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I’ve made so many chocolate chip cookies using different recipes, this is my favorite!! The recipe calls for 1 whole egg, and 1 egg yolk. I accidentally messed up and put 1 whole egg and 1 egg white- I was nervous the texture/shape would be weird when I baked them. But they were amazing!! I don’t know if I’ll make them the “right” way again! Soft, chewy, fluffy- 11/10
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Hi Sally, I just made your soft chewy chocolate chip cookies. Followed the recipe exactly. I noticed that the ones I left in longer stayed puffy but the others look similar to yours. Tasted good though!
Perfect texture, spread fine (I used silicone mat) but it needs more sugar. It wasn’t very sweet. I will increase white sugar and decrease salt next time. I did weigh the main ingredients and followed every instruction.
My daughter absolutely loves this recipe and makes it for friends and family. She always gets rave reviews on them. Can’t say enough good things about this!
★★★★★
I do apologize for this email. I have tried to make this recipe 40 times. I just can’t figure out what I am doing wrong.
Hi Steve, We are happy to help troubleshoot. What seems to be the problem with your cookies? Our posts on 5 Tips to Improve your Next Batch and 10 Tips to Prevent Cookies from Spreading may be helpful depending on what you need help with.
Hands down BEST chocolate chip cookie recipe ever!!!! I made two batches of these (and keep dough in my fridge) and everyone LOVED them!! thank you thank you thank you!
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Hi! This is the first time I’ve ever made one of your recipes and it failed! The cookies, even after chilling, are completely spread out and flat on the cookie sheet. I just moved, so maybe it’s my new oven? I’m so bummed! Any tips?
Hi Kate! Here’s all our best tips to keep cookies from spreading. We do recommend always using an in-oven thermometer since most ovens aren’t the temperature they say they are. Especially helpful with a new oven!
This recipe is the best chocolate chip cookie recipe I have tried. Instead of 16 large cookies, I made 40 25 gram cookies, and I turned them around halfway through the baking time. Even though I weigh each ingredient and chill the dough, some batches spread more then others, though they all taste delicious. Most of the other chocolate chip cookie recipes taste very similar to the store bought kind that you just break apart, put on the sheet and bake, so they are not really worth the extra effort. However, these cookies taste much better. They are flavorful, are soft in the middle and crisp on the outside when baked for the right amount time, and are perfectly chocolaty. My family loves them too.
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I am a very experienced baker but my first batch made exact to the recipe middles were raw even after 15 minutes and 10 on the baking sheet. Turned oven to 340 degrees and flattened tops…bingo, still thick but chewy but delicious flavor..325 oven and cylinder shape just didn’t work for me, also needed to leave dough out of fridge for much longer.
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i decided to make these cookies for my family and they didn’t turn out how you said. these cookies were thick but crumbly and kept falling apart. they also did not flatten during baking time. i followed the recipe exact but they didn’t turn out good. my cookies have the taste of FLOUR and flour alone. i think there are better recipes you should try instead.
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Hi this recipe looks good and yet to try it out. Kindly advise me what is the substitute for cornstarch? Thanks
Hi PK, if you don’t have cornstarch on hand, you can simply omit it. Hope you enjoy the cookies!
AMAZING. BEST COOKIES EVER.
Everybody that tastes them can’t stop eating them. I have been asked for the recipe so many times I’ve lost count. I now keep a frozen batch of dough balls in my freezer at all times. They never last long.
I am a novice baker and find ur recipes, tips and tricks so helpful and I’m becoming a more confident baker.
Thank you for all the great recipes
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In the notes of the recipe it says you can add nuts, etc. to the recipe but not to exceed 1 to 1-1/4 cups. Can I add 1-1/4 cup nuts in addition to the chocolate chips or does the total add in (choc chips & nuts) need to equal 1-1/4 cups? Thanks in advance for your help! I have made one batch with just the chocolate chips but would love to make more with nuts.
Hi Marci! You’ll want the total amount of add-ins, including the chocolate chips and nuts, to be around 1 – 1 and 1/4 cups. Hope you enjoy the nut version of these cookies!
I just made these cookies for my daughter and her friend and they’re perfect! They’re the perfect combination of soft, chewy and lightly crisp. I accidentally put 2 tsp of corn starch and was worried, but it wasn’ta problem. Also I used a silicone baking mat. I’ll be making more! Thank you!
I’ve been trying CC cookie recipes for 20 years. This is the one I’ve been looking for. Different people like different types, but I like these – stays soft for days (or as long as the cookies last …), chewy.
I only use about 40 grams per cookie. They spread more than I would like – reshaping them during baking didn’t seem to help – they just spread out again. I wish I had small rings to put each cookie in to prevent them from spreading too far, but I couldn’t find anything like that in the baking hardware department. I’d try the muffin tin, but I think the high sides could affect how they would bake (and my muffin tin is dark).
I need to let them sit out of the refrigerator longer than the what the recipe calls for or there are too hard to shape. I might try shaping them before refrigerating next time.
Thank you for this recipe.
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I live in Idaho and have a hard time finding recipes that turn out in high altitude! These cookies turned out amazing!! Soft and chewy. Definitely keeping this one!
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I must say that I didn’t really like this cookie recipe. The cookie center is too soft and rather tasteless for me. I much prefer a crunchier, chewy cookie. This was especially disappointing in light of the overnight chilling. This was my least favorite of your CC cookies. I’m glad you have others to choose from.
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Amazing! My new go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe. Weighed the dough balls and baked the longer amount of time and they’re perfection!
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These cookies are so chewy and soft, and absolutely delicious! The only downside is that I could not stop eating them.
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You are my go-to site when I need a recipe for ANYTHING! Tried these for the first time for my son’s canoe regatta. Gone in a flash!
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Absolutely fabulous! The best cookie ever- our friends thought they were professionally made! That’s a compliment!!
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Hi Georgie, For the best taste and texture we recommend sticking with real butter for these cookies.
This is the best cc cookie recipe I’ve ever came across. cornstarch, refrigerating and that extra yolk are really what sets Sally’s recipe apart from the rest. Wow! Sooooo good, I came across this trying to make a copycat of Craig’s Cookies in Toronto. They charge $3 a cookie! I was spending $60 on cookies a month easily. This is exactly what they taste like, just incredible!
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