Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
These large, bakery-style thick and chewy chocolate chip cookies stay soft for days and are a huge family favorite. Made with melted butter, a high brown sugar to white sugar ratio, and an extra egg yolk to ensure super soft cookies, they require NO chilling time and are the perfect after-school snack.
These cookies have been around for a LONG time! I first made them nearly 12 years ago when I fell in love with America’s Test Kitchen and my new Baking Illustrated cookbook. I had long been on the hunt for a fabulous thick and chewy chocolate chip cookie and I had finally hit pay dirt! This was my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe for years upon years, until I stumbled upon The New York Times chocolate chip cookie, which I modified a bit to become my NEW favorite thick and chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe.
However, these cookies made a resurgence in my kitchen last weekend and were due for a revival here on the site, especially since they’re one of my all-time most popular recipes!
How to Make Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Start with Butter: We use melted butter to keep the cookies super soft and moist.
- High Brown Sugar to Granulated Sugar Ratio: Brown sugar ensures soft cookies and the white sugar helps the cookies spread out. For cookies that are chewier and have a more robust flavor, we use double the amount of brown sugar to white sugar.
- Egg & Vanilla Extract: Eggs provide structure and an extra egg yolk gives the cookies a boost of softness. Vanilla is our flavor enhancer!
- Dry Ingredients: You’ll need all-purpose flour, baking soda, and salt for structure, rise and flavor balance.
- Chocolate Chips: Of course! One and a half cups give you chocolate in every single bite without being overwhelming.
Ahhhh that dough!
There’s a little shaping technique that makes these cookies have that gorgeous bumpy texture on top that looks like they came straight out of the bakery.
All of that combined to make these my oldest, most favorite chocolate chip cookie that needs absolutely no chill time whatsoever.
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While the NY Times cookies that I love require some refrigeration before they’re baked, these can be mixed up and baked right away, so you’ll have warm cookies fresh from the oven and ready to devour in about 45 minutes. Can’t beat it!
What’s your favorite type of chocolate chip cookie?
Watch the Recipe Video Below:
One year ago: The Best Chocolate Frosting
Five years ago: Overnight Chilled Plum-Oatmeal Pudding
Seven years ago: Peach Coffee Cake
Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 cups (250 g) + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon (0.5 teaspoon) baking soda
- ½ teaspoon (0.5 teaspoon) salt
- 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 1 cup (220 g) light or dark brown sugar
- ½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1½ cups (270 g) semisweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Adjust the oven racks to the upper- and lower-middle positions and preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.
- Using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter and sugars until thoroughly blended, 2 to 3 minutes. Beat in the egg, yolk, and vanilla until combined. Reduce the mixer speed to low, add the dry ingredients and beat until just combined. Using a rubber spatula, stir in the chocolate chips.
- Roll a scant ¼ cup of the dough into a ball. Hold the dough ball with the fingertips of both hands and pull into 2 equal halves. Rotate the halves 90 degrees and, with jagged surfaces facing up, join the halves together at their base, again forming a single ball, being careful not to smooth the dough’s uneven surface. Place the formed dough balls on the prepared baking sheets, jagged surface up, spacing them 2½ inches apart.
- Bake until the cookies are light golden brown and the outer edges start to set, yet the centers are still soft and puffy, 15 to 18 minutes, rotating the baking sheets front to back and top to bottom halfway through the baking time. Cool the cookies on the baking sheets. Once cool, store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days. These can also be wrapped in plastic wrap, placed in a freezer bag and frozen for up to 2 months.
Notes
Did you make this recipe?
Leave a review below, then snap a picture and tag @thebrowneyedbaker on Instagram so I can see it!
This recipe was originally published on June 21, 2008, updated in July 2016 with new photos, and then refreshed in August 2019 with updated photos and more recipe tips.
[photos by Ari of Well Seasoned]
QUESTION! I made these last night and the dough was so crumbly I couldn’t make cookies. It reminded me of moon sand. I am at 8500 feet altitude and I’m guessing that maybe I need more egg? I tried to salvage the dough and make blondies out of them but with all the butter the outside cooked and the inside stayed doughy. Any suggestions would be great because I think these could be my new favorite!
Thanks!
Yikes, it definitely sounds like it may be an altitude issue, as most times these cookies lean towards the other end of the spectrum – the batter being a little too much on the soft side. I have never baked at high altitude; I know there are a lot of guides and suggestions out there that you could consult. If you have any standby alterations that you make to recipes, you could try that too.
These can be shaped into balls and frozen. When you want one (or 7), pull out the desired amount, place on parchment paper lined baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes at 300, turning half way through the baking time.
Love this recipe but I was wondering if there’s a way to make it with whole wheat flour. It’s currently all I have in my cupboard but my first attempt left the cookie dough dry and crumbly. :c
Hi Josie, I normally don’t recommend using whole wheat flour unless a recipe has been specifically formulated for it. If you’ve already tried it and found the dough to be dry and crumbly, my guess is that it’s not going to work. Usually, you can only substitute up to 1/2 whole wheat for all-purpose flour and still hope to have decent results.
Oh well thanks anyway. I was actually able to make it work my second time around but, I’m still going to play around with it. I think the only reason it came out dry and crumbly the first time was because I had followed the recipe the whole way through. Unfortunately that doesn’t work well without making changes. So I will continue to make changes until I run out of flour. c: Thanks for this great recipe and your feedback. :D
Awesome recipe, I have tried too many CC cookie recipes with average results. I am a huge fan of large chewy cookies, and these turned out amazing! Thanks for the post! Keep up the good work. Do you have a place to submit pictures? I like seeing hows others turned out so I’m sure others may too!
I too have been on the hunt for a new “go-to” chocolate chip cookie recipe. I found a few that I liked “ok” that claimed to be the BEST, but always found them lacking something… I tried this recipe for the first time this week and they were amazing. My new favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. I took them to work with me and my team loved them as well. I am making them again as we speak. I thought the recipe was super easy to make. But a couple of notes from my end, I don’t have a kitchen scale, so I just measured as always. When I tried to do the ball rolling, split apart method, I found the dough was way to sticky for that (refrigerating for a bit probably would have helped). I ended up with cookie dough stuck pretty well all over my hands. I am not complaining… can’t say that I mind licking delicious cookie dough off of my hands. So instead of the pull apart method, I just used tablespoons and made big spoonfuls onto the cookie sheets. They still came out looking like the picture. Nice and crackly. The final note from my side is that I cooked the batch first for 8 minutes, then rotated. But then instead of 8 minutes on the final part, I watched the cookies like a hawk. I think it ended up being more like 5-6 minutes. Cooled as directed and they were perfection. Gone in 24 hours. Thanks again.
A couple other notes on my process with these cookies since I have made the recipe no less than 20 times now… (yes I have a problem with chocolate chip cookies). :D I use sea salt instead of iodized and love this because every now and then you get a little chunk of salt that make such a nice balance with the sweet of the cookie. If you like “salted caramel anything” this is the way to go. Also I only use really good butter. This makes a big difference. I don’t usually cool the butter all the way down. I like how the warm butter caramelizes the sugars… Plus I don’t like to have to wait. The only other thing I should say is that these cookies truly are THE PERFECT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE. And I have been hunting for a long time. Everyone I make them for tells me I should be selling them on the street and can’t stop eating them. So thanks again for the recipe. Changed my life forever. :D I won’t be making another chocolate chip cookie again, and I know this recipe will be passed along for generations in my family.
Found same recipe via America’s Test Kitchen. I was hopeful. Gooey and yummy out of the oven last night but even though in airtight container…hard as rocks today.
Made these cookies a couple of weeks ago and they are excellent! I had a few mishaps however. I found the dough to be a bit dry, then my DD accidentally added another 3/4 bag of chocolate chips making them super duper chocolaty. I then baked them a bit to long so they ended up more crispy but I found that they didn’t really spread out at all and I still had more mounds than flat cookies. We still ate them and sent some over to DD friends houses. Tonight I am making them with coconut oil (12 TBS is ALOT!), shredded coconut in place of the chocolate chips and the 1/4 bag of chips we have left over. Hopefully they will turn out well, they are in the oven now!
I finally made these cookies after months of bookmarking the recipe!!! I followed the recipe to a T , but I did not have a Full cup of light brown sugar so I topped it off with dark brown sugar. The melted butter was cooled to Warm as stated. I do not have luck with parchment paper , it burns it our oven so I used the cookies sheets that my mom has used for DECADES, so the non stick is no longer. The cookies were soft in middle at first after cooling but hours after being in air tight container they were crisp all way thru. What did I do wrong? Some comments state that the butter is to be COOL . Which is correct.. warm or cool completely? The cookies were soft in middle when taken out of oven..How soft should they be at this point?? To make sure of not over baking them??
Still YUMMY!!
On the brown sugar bit…I don’t keep brown sugar in my house simply because I don’t use it very often and I hate the rock of a disaster it becomes after a while so I make my own brown sugar when I need it. I just mix the amount of white sugar called for with some molasses mixing it until there are no more molasses lumps…seems to work out fine for me. So if you have molasses and no brown sugar there is an option for you.
Hi Gail, I usually melt the butter before I do anything else, and then go about getting all of the other ingredients ready, prepped, etc. By then the butter is usually about room temperature, which seems to work well. When you take the cookies out of the oven the cookies shouldn’t even be baked the whole way through in the middle – they should be lightly brown and set around the edges, but still very pale and puffy in the middle. If you were to put your finger on the middle, it would just be goo. However, the residual heat from the baking sheets helps to finish baking the cookies as they set up.
Made these this afternoon…fantastic they were! Hoping for enough to go in my grandkids’ lunches this week.
These were AWESOME!! I have a favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, but didn’t have all of the ingredients to make it…I searched and found this recipe.
I have a new favorite <3
These were amazing, and the illustration was very helpful! Thanks, Michelle!
These are sooooo good! My husband, friends, neighbors beg me to make them:) also, if you are looking for a thick cookie, using baking powder instead of baking soda and cook them a bit longer than the recipe says. I did that on accident and they came out thick and so yummy! I still prefer the original recipe though;)
Quick question. I have made these before and they are my all time FAVORITE cookie; however, I have lost the recipe. When I finally found it again, or at least what I thought was the original recipe, on the ATK Feed their measurements for flour are 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons (10 2/3 ounces) and your recipe calls for 10 5/8 ounces. The recipe at http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/recipes/thick-and-chewy-chocolate-chip-cookies/ looks like the original one; however, they do not pull the cookies apart in this one and to me that is what makes the cookie! Any feedback would be helpful as I am making several batches of these cookies for friends and family for Christmas and want to make certain I get it right because I weigh all of my ingredients and know that it can make a huge difference if it is off. I really LOVE your blog!!!!
Hi Cynthia, I’m not sure if ATK modified their recipe since originally publishing this one, but this version is the only one I ever use. Enjoy!
Got lucky to have the cookies turn out great on the first try! Highly recommended, the instructions were very easy to follow- especially for an amateur baker like me :) So proud of my cookies. Thanks so much for this recipe!
I have made these several times and they are always delicious. So yesterday I made them with white chocolate chips, walnuts and chocolate chunks. I do not think I have ever ate a better cookie! The teachers at my school loved them too. Thank you for the wonderful recipe. I have shared it many times along with the website.
Ok second go around with the recipe. Got demands from work to make more! This time I used the correct flour and the dough looked right this time. First batch out of oven…we will see if they retain their chewy texture after fully cooling…wish me luck!
Hi,
Can I make this dough ahead of time and freeze individual balls to bake a week later? Thanks!
Hi Gena, Yes, you may just need to add a minute or two to the baking time.
Oh and I forgot to mention that my chocolate chips kept falling to the bottom of the mixing bowl and not really sticking in the dough…what did I do wrong?
Hi Jen, By adding flour, too much may have been absorbed by the cookies, which could have made them hard. These cookies usually stay soft and chewy for days (up to a week) before they get a little stale. I always recommend using parchment paper or a silicone baking mat, to ensure that there are no extra ingredients being absorbed by the baked goods.
Not sure what you mean by adding flour….do you mean maybe I added too much? I want to try these again bc even tho they were hard everyone loved loved loved them!!
Hi! Tried the recipe today and they looked perfect. They we soft and chewy right out of the oven after cooling for a minute. But one I put them on the plate and they were out for fifteen minutes or so they were hard and crispy and not chewy. I used baking spray with flour on the baking sheets. Any suggestions as to why they turned hard? Thanks!
hi, i tried making them, but the dough was buttery, is that the way its supposed to be? and i noticed that when i use a parchment paper it seems a little oily on the bottom. that’s the only “problem” i seem to have, and my melted butter was actually at room temperature already. do you think it has to do with humidity? I live in a tropical country :) Other than those two things, I think these are the bomb!
Hi Nina, While the dough is a little buttery, there shouldn’t be any oil left on the parchment paper. I’m not sure what you mean that the melted butter was already at room temperature? What you want to do is melt the butter, then let it sit until it cools back down to room temperature.
I have been searching for the perfect chewy choc. chip cookie. My family is very picky about their cookies. I made “cookie A” this morning and they were perfect! A huge hit. Thanks so much for the recipe!
What is the difference between creaming butter and sugar, and just mixing it like this recipe says?
Hi Katherine, Creaming the butter and sugar results in a little bit more of a lighter, crisper cookie. Mixing it as the recipe describes is part of what gives it that thicker, gooey texture.
If I wanted to make them smaller, how long should I bake them??
It is a great recipe!
Hi Stephanie, It all depends on how small. Depending on the size you use, I’d probably start checking them around the 8-minute mark.
Hi I am in England and want to use thus recipe however you are using measurements in cups and sticks can you please advise in ounces or grams please
Hi Tracey, Most of the ingredients above are actually in ounces; the amount of butter would be 6 ounces.
Made these today. They are amazing! Trying to talk myself out of eating ALL of them. So chewy and awesome!
And to all the people who are getting thin batter, I think I have solved your problem. When you mix the melted butter and sugars together you need to mix it for a couple of good minutes. When you mix it more it thickens a bit and starts to get a lighter, creamy look. After that just add all the rest of your ingredients as you would and they should turn out fine :)
Oh, and be generous with the brown sugar. FIRMLY pack it and you’re good to go :)
This was not good! I got chocolate chip disks!!!! Followed directions perfect! These are not thick and chewy!
These were awful. I followed the recipe exactly and they tasted like butter. Even the consistency of the cookies were awful. No I did not overcook them. I’m very upset with how much of my baking stuff I wasted making these. I will not use this recipe again.
I’ve tried it last night with my som and it was so tasty but a bit hard which I think that eather the temperature was a bit high or it was cooked too long.. I kept it for 18 min with switching up to pottom but want to know the temp to use for next time…. Thank you so much as I’ve searched for such recipes long ago…<3
Did I pay attention to let the melted butter cool? Nope. But it wasn’t scorching hot either. I just used a standard 1/4 c. ice cream scoop. Why didn’t I pull apart and re-squish them?? Too lazy I guess. They still came out absolutley perfect. I won’t make another chocolate chip cookie other than this one.
looks great! would love these recipes in metric too for ease but il convert for now.. !