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
High altitude changes?
Hi Kim, we wish we could help, but we have no experience baking at high altitude. Some readers have found this chart helpful: https://www.kingarthurflour.com/learn/high-altitude-baking.html
I really love this recipe! I really can’t afford real vanilla extract, is it ok to use imitation? Would it ruin the taste? Thank you
★★★★★
Hi Stephanie, you can use imitation vanilla here. Same amount.
I made this but I added freeze dried strawberrys. It was so good!
Any ideas on a “sugar free” option? I tried to make an even swap with Golden Monk fruit and granulated Monk fruit for the sugar and brown sugar, but it definitely did not hold together. Added a little peanut butter for a binder so I’m hoping that works. It’s chilling now!
★★★★★
Hi Catie! We’d love to help but we are not trained in baking with sugar substitutes. For best taste and texture (and so you don’t waste your time trying to adapt this recipe since it may not work properly), it may be more useful to find a recipe that is specifically formulated for sugar substitutes. Thank you!
These cookies are amazing. I get rave reviews when I make for friends and family. I also am a FCS teacher and my 6th graders make these cookies with excellent results. Have made with a variety of mix-ins such as broken pretzels, Oreo cookie chunks and various types of chips. All versions have come out great.
★★★★★
I cut the sugar a bit so it wasn’t very sweet and they were very good. One of my sons ate his cookie in silence and the other one was ecstatic. I really dislike chilling cookie dough, it makes it so hard!!
★★★★
Can I substitute peanut butterchips? My daughters family are crazy about these. Delicious
Absolutely!
I absolutely live because of this recipe, I use this recipe every time I need a pick me up, for special occasions, or for family gatherings and everyone loves them.
★★★★★
My search for the best chocolate chip cookie recipe was finally over when I stumbled onto recipe AMAZING recipe! These are by far the best!!!!! Thank you, Sally!
★★★★★
I would love to see less sugar in your recipes. Is it possible? Thank you.
Sugar is used for moisture and texture in baked goods as well as taste. You can certainly try reducing the sugar, but the resulting texture will be different than intended. You may love our healthier baking recipes section!
Is browning the butter an option here instead of just melting it? I love the extra flavour brown butter brings❤️ I have never tried a cookie recipe from SBA that I didn’t love, btw!
Hi Lefki, you can, yes, and the flavor is outstanding! But they can be a little more crumbly using brown butter — we suggest using the recipe for Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies.
I’ve made this recipe multiple times now and it’s always a hit! I switch up the chocolate, sometimes I’ll add in Reese’s pieces or mini eggs with chocolate chips. SO yummy!
★★★★★
Not so much. Didn’t turn out quite like you said.
Hi Raye, thank you for giving this recipe a try. We’re happy to help troubleshoot!
I made these for Mother’s Day as our dessert. They didn’t make it to the wire rack as everyone was eating them right out of the oven. This is now my go-to chocolate chip recipe. Everyone loved them.
★★★★★
These are my go-to chocolate chip cookies! Everyone loves them and I was hoping to use the recipe to make a large cookie in a cake pan for a birthday. Would this recipe work for that purpose?
Hi Lucy, here’s our chocolate chip cookie cake recipe! It’s adapted from this recipe and our soft chocolate chip cookies.
Best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever ate! And so easy to make. Love this recipe! Got lots of compliments.
★★★★★
Okay so I have to apologize for my previous review. When I baked a batch the first time, I followed the instruction of baking it for 12 minutes at 163 degrees celsius and in that almost tall column, the cookies came out really browned, crispy and weird shaped. I tried to bake another batch with the exact same batter but this time, I baked it at 150 degrees celsius for only 9 minutes and made it into a ball shape, not a tall column, it turned out PERFECT and exactly what I expected. Great recipe but I don’t know why I needed to make these tweaks to come up with the chewy cookie I was looking for. Thank you!
★★★★★
Love how thick and chewy these are. The edges still give a bit of crunch which I like too.
Made these several times and always make a dozen after chilling and roll the rest into logs in clear wrap. We like slightly warm cookies so it works well. They last only a week or two because we love them. Great cookies…thank you!
My new favorite cookie recipe!! I made a double batch and froze them so we had cookies on demand (except now we’re out so I better make some more!).
Very good!! My first batch I used my stand mixer and it came out really flat. So I hand mixed with my second batch and it stayed puffed up. Idk if that’s a coincidence or not. It’s difficult for me to hand mix dough so this recipe will be a special treat.
★★★★★
Could I triple/quadruple these? I have made these doubled and they were fantastic, but need a lot more. Would there be any changes I need to know for quadrupling or tripling? Thanks!
Hi Em! This recipe multiplies well as long as you have a large enough mixer to handle the volume.
This recipe turned out very dry. The unbaked dough was like sand despite the correct ingredient amounts (I doubled it but double checked the measurements). The baked cookies were good but wondering why the dough was so sandy. I had to manually form them into balls. Any thoughts?
Usually when cookies are dry, it is because of too much flour in the dough. How did you measure the flour? Make sure to spoon and level (instead of scooping) to avoid packing in too much flour into your measuring cups – or use a kitchen scale. You can read more about properly measuring baking ingredients in this post.
Hey Sally! Thanks for the great recipe! I wanted to try these for the texture and I’m sure it’s because I’m used to the taste of my usual browned butter cc cookies, but I found this dough to be a wee bit bland.
Could I sub browned butter here and not throw the chemistry off??
Thanks!
Hi Jenny, You can use brown butter, yes, and the flavor is outstanding! But they can be a little more crumbly using brown butter — we suggest using our recipe for Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies instead. Thanks so much for giving these a try!
Thanks for the reply, Lexi. I really enjoyed reading about the change in moisture content — 30% is far higher than I’d imagined and explains why additional moisture must be added back in.
Recipe is wonderful!
the instructions are labor intensive, and for me totally unnecessary. Trimmed 2 1/2 hours off these, and they still turned out wonderfully.
I’m so glad you enjoy these! Did you skip the dough chilling, or reduce down to 1 hour? Just in case other readers want to try it this way too. I’ve always had to chill the dough for 2-3 hours. The dough is quite soft from the melted butter.
This is my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe that I’ve made, and I’ve used a lot of different recipes. My question is, could I add some cocoa powder to this recipe to make them double chocolate chip cookies?
Hi Nicole, here is our recipe for double chocolate chip cookies instead! Same great chewy texture as these ones.
I love this recipe a lot! It really tastes good! Chocolate chip cookies are good but this was especially delicious. I can’t wait to make more!
★★★★★
Well Tom, use you brain and click the jump to recipe button. Amazing how that works. No need to be an ass about it.
★★★★★
These cookies are delicious. I have been a person who struggled making cookies because I forget to take butter out to soften for the right consistency of most cookies, but no problem with this recipe! You have to melt it anyway! The key really is to make sure to refrigerate them for a bit I think. I am ALWAYS making 2 batches at a time. Last time I made them I didn’t know we had no eggs, so I used baking powder and oil (I think?) As a sub for it. I found that online. Used that substitution and the cookies were still as fantastic as If the egg was in there. We love these!!!
★★★★★
Perfect recipe! BUT I didn’t read the recipe well. Instead of measuring the quantity of butter first then melting. I melted the butter first then measured and ended up using twice the amount. Got a very greasy dough.Added a lot of flour to get it right. Tasted great tho.I can’t wait to make it again with the correct quantity of butter.
I love this recipe! This time I used white chocolate instead of milk chocolate. I noticed that the cookies didn’t come down enough as they used to. Could the different type of chocolate be the reason or is it something else?
Would be grateful for your insights.
★★★★★
Hi Santa, you can definitely use white chocolate chips. That shouldn’t have made a difference. If you find they’re not spreading by the end of the bake time, you can gently tap the baking pan on the counter a few times to help initiate spread.