The best chocolate chip cookies
- Published: 25 Jul 17
- Updated: 26 May 25
After the best chocolate chip cookies recipe of all time? Trained pastry chef Ella Tarn tested various versions, honing, tweaking and perfecting the blend of ingredients to find the best possible version. Our easy recipe makes chewy-yet-crisp cookies with generous chunks of milk chocolate, topped with a sprinkling of sea salt flakes.
- The trick to soft, chewy cookies: American-style cookies like these should have just enough crunchy crust around the edges to hold the chewy centre together. However, the cookies shouldn’t be too hard or they risk crossing over to being a biscuit. The trick is not to overbake them – they should still feel soft, almost underbaked, when you take them out of the oven (they’ll firm up as they cool).
- How to prevent cakey cookies: The cookies will spread as they cook, so space out well on the baking sheets. If they don’t have room to spread they’ll end up too thick with a sponge-like texture. Chilling the dough before baking helps to develop the flavour and to control the spread as the cookies bake: the outside melts first, helping the cookies to spread out at an even rate.
- Customisable recipe: Try adding your own inclusions to the cookie dough. Mix up the type of chocolate (we love caramelised white chocolate) or try candy-coated chocolate beans, chewy toffees or chopped nuts. See more ideas in the Know-how section, below. Avoid treats very high in sugar, such as marshmallows, which can burn.
Ready for a cookie challenge? Try these distinctively wrinkly pan-bang cookies, a cult US recipe.
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Makes 12 -
Hands-on time 15 min, oven time 15 min, plus chilling and cooling
Before you start
Select your ingredients carefully for making cookies – it makes all the difference with this simple recipe:
- Good quality butter. You need butter rather than margarine, and not just for flavour: the alternatives don’t melt in the same way during baking, and you need that melt to help create the all-important cookie spread.
- Chopped chocolate. We used chopped milk chocolate rather than chocolate chips because we love how the chunks melt into irregular puddles in the baked cookies.
- Granulated sugar. Our cookies are made with a mix of soft light brown and white granulated sugar. We found this combination helps the cookies spread at a more even rate as they bake, so they’re neither too thin and crisp, nor too thick and soft. See Tips for more info on how difference types of sugar affect cookies.
Nutrition
- Calories
- 266kcals
- Fat
- 12.8g (7.7g saturated)
- Protein
- 3.3g
- Carbohydrates
- 33.9g (21.1g sugars)
- Fibre
- 1g
- Salt
- 0.4g
delicious. tips
If the dough is a little sticky, dust your hands with flour when shaping.
Cookies made with only white granulated sugar (or caster sugar) will be paler and have a crisper texture because the sugar in the mix melts quickly and the cookies spread more thinly during baking.
Cookies made with all light brown sugar will be darker in colour, softer in texture and have a deep caramel flavour
Watch the video to see these cookies in all their glory…
Complete the recipe up to 24 hours in advance, cool, then keep in an airtight container. Or make the dough up to 24 hours ahead and keep covered in the fridge until ready to shape and bake. Cookie dough freezes well in a sealed food bag or well wrapped in cling film; thaw fully to continue with the recipe.
How to jazz up chocolate chip cookies
Chop up your favourite chocolate bar and stir into the mixture instead of the milk chocolate for an even more decadent cookie.Freeze chewy toffees until solid, then push one into the centre of each ball of cookie dough (step 3). The toffees will give the cookies a melting caramel middle when they’re warm.
Dip each cooled, baked cookie into melted chocolate and leave to set on a lined baking sheet for a double chocolate cookie.
Use 1⁄2 tsp peppermint extract instead of the vanilla (step 1) to make mint choc chip cookies