Gemma’s Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

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Hi Bold Bakers!

As a pastry chef for years, I know a thing or two about cookies (including 50+ cookie recipes here) so I’m excited to share with you how to make my Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe. Move over Toll House and Mrs. Fields, the Bigger Bolder King of all Chocolate Chip Cookie recipes is here, and it is here to stay!

Follow my tried and true recipe and my Bold Baking Tips below, and I’ll show you how to make buttery chocolate chip cookies as you’ll find in your favorite bakery or restaurant.

Looking for variations? Try these:

• The Internet’s Best Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
• The Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies Of Your Dreams
• Bakery-Style Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Why These Are The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

This Best Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe perfectly combines the magic ratio of brown to white sugar. While this seems like a small detail it makes a huge difference in the texture of the cookie.

The brown sugar makes it crispy on the edges with a caramel scent while the white sugar provides that sweet gooey middle.

Serious Chocolate Chunkage

The next thing that makes this the perfect recipe for chewy chocolate chip cookies is obviously the chocolate.

Normal cookie recipes are 80% cookie dough to 20% chocolate chips, but my recipe is all about the chocolate chunkage. I like to use bittersweet chocolate with 72% cocoa solids, and I chop it up from a bar of chocolate.

Now if you don’t eat eggs, you can always use my egg substitute chart and still enjoy my cookies. You can also enjoy white chocolate substituted instead.

[ Vegan? Try my Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe! ]

Who Invented The Chocolate Chip Cookie?

The original recipe, called the Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie, was invented in 1938 by chefs Ruth Graves Wakefield and Sue Brides. Wakefield owned the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, and used Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate for the historic recipe.

How Many Calories In A Chocolate Chip Cookie

Obviously, chocolate cookies come in a plethora of shapes, sizes, and calories. However, in a medium-sized cookie, you can expect there to be roughly 78 calories.

What You’ll Need To Make Chocolate Chip Cookies

Thankfully making chocolate chip cookies from scratch is not only unchallenging but only requires a few tools:

1. Baking sheet and parchment paper
2. Medium and large bowls
3. Whisk
4. Spatula
5. Measuring cups
6. Wire rack

How To Make Chocolate Chip Cookies

Here’s how to make homemade chocolate chip cookies — and you’ll be in cookie heaven in no time (and don’t forget to get the full recipe with measurements, on the page down below)

1. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt.
2. In a large bowl, melt the butter before adding in white and brown sugars and whisking.
3. Add one egg into the large bowl and whisk. Scrapes sides of the bowl with a spatula.
4. Add another egg in and add vanilla as well. Scrapes the sides of the bowl again.
5. Add the medium bowl into the large bowl. Stir with a spatula.
6. Stir in the chocolate chips.
7. Chill the dough for at least an hour.
8. Scoop balls of cookie dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.
9. Bake the cookies until they’re golden brown but still doughy.
10. Take out of the oven and bang the pan on the counter. Let cool on a wire rack.

What NOT To Do When Making These Cookies

If you’re looking for mistakes you might make in addition to everything that can go right, I have just the thing — and even made a video all about them so you can see just how they can affect your results. Here’s a breakdown, as well:

• Don’t: Use room temperature butter.
  Do: Fully melt your butter. This will affect the end results of your cookie.
• Don’t: Don’t use all white sugar.
  Do: Add brown sugar for more of a caramel flavor, moisture, and a gooey chewy cookie. See my explanation as to why above in this article.
• Don’t: Add all your dry ingredients straight into the wet all at once.
  Do: Mix dry ingredients separately in a bowl before adding to the wet. This ensures your raising agent and salt are thoroughly combined before mixing up your dough.
• Don’t: Use baking powder.
  Do: Use baking soda. Baking powder gives you a cakier cookie and not a gooey, doughier center like the way baking soda does.
• Don’t: Skip the vanilla. Think of vanilla as a seasoning. It helps bring out the flavor of the other ingredients and also pairs really well with dark chocolate.
• Don’t: Use chocolate chips in your cookies.
  Do: Use a bar of chocolate and chop that. Chocolate chips contain stabilizers and they will melt and don’t pool like regular chocolate. Also, the quality of chocolate for chips sometimes is not as good as a bar where you can see the cocoa.
• Don’t: Bake off your dough straight away.
  Do: Chill your dough. Chilling the dough for at least 1-hour will means the dough will be easier to work with and your cookies won’t spread as much when baking. Chill your dough for a few hours, even days are really recommended for a better texture but also a better-flavored cookie. This is called ‘aging’ your dough. See the next section as to why!
• Do: Scoop the dough to the measurement I give in the recipe. The bake time is based on the size of the dough. For example, too small a ball of dough and your cookies will overbake in the time I gave for a bigger ball of dough leaving you with a crisp, harder cookie with no doughy center.
• Don’t: Flatten the cookie.
  Do: Leave the round scoop as it is. This thick ball will slowly melt giving your crips outside but the gooey center. Bake time (like above) is affected if you flatten your cookie beforehand rather than letting it slowly melt itself giving you a thick, soft center.
• Don’t: Once baked, don’t just set your baked cookies over to the side to cool down.
  Do: Pan Bang! Banging your baking pan on a hard countertop immediately once your cookie comes from the oven with help give you a lovely crinkle on top of your cookie but it will also ‘pool’ the chocolate so it almost bursts in your cookie.

What Is ‘Aging Your Dough’?

Aging cookie dough does two things, develops a more pronounced flavor and gooey-er texture. As the dough chills, it gradually dries out, concentrating the flavors of all the ingredients.

Aging also changes the texture. The drier the dough, the more concentrated the sugar. Just cover the dough with cling wrap in your bowl and they’ll keep just fine in the refrigerator for up to 7 days.

If you don’t want to age it, you can just chill your dough for a minimum of an hour. Chilling your dough helps keep your cookies from spreading while baking. Also, at this stage, you can freeze your dough in balls or rolled into a log and wrapped in cling wrap. It keeps well in a freezer for up to twelve weeks.

Why Are My Cookies Flat?

1. You needed to chill your dough. Chilling cookie dough for just 30 minutes solidifies the butter inside, and as the cookies bake, the fat in the chilled cookie dough takes longer to melt than room-temperature fat. And the longer the fat remains solid, the less the cookies spread.
2. Or you flattened the cookie dough out on the cookie sheet. Do not flatten these cookies! They will flatten out themselves in the oven.

Gemma’s Pro Chef Secrets to the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

1. Remember to chill your cookie dough. Chilling dough refines flavor and texture. It also ensures less spread during baking.
2. Scoop 1/4 cup of cookies as directed in my recipe. The baking time is based on a 1/4 scoop of cookie dough. If you make the scoops smaller then you need to bake them for less. Makes around 14-15 cookies.
3. Make sure you don’t FLATTEN the cookies. Shape a round ball of dough and place that on the cookie sheet. Then in the oven, it will flatten itself out, giving you a thick cookie with a gooey center. Pop them in the fridge to make sure they are cold before baking.
4. Bake cookies from COLD at a high temperature for a short time. This will ensure you have crisp edges and a gooey, doughy center.
5. Pan Bang!? The easy trick of banging the pan a few times after baking, causing the cookies to “fall,” produces a cookie covered in lovely crinkles on the surface and redistributes the melted chocolate.

All The Ways To Make Chocolate Chip Cookies

This recipe is the best of all worlds, but if you’re a fan of chewy chocolate chip cookies or soft chocolate chip cookies, I have what you’re looking for:

• The Internet’s Best Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
• The Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies Of Your Dreams

Don’t Miss More Best-Ever Recipes

• Best Ever Brownies
• Best Ever Banana Bread
• Best Ever Oatmeal Cookies

And don’t forget to buy my Bigger Bolder Baking Cookbook!

Want To Go Deeper?

Level up your baking skills even further and subscribe to the Bold Baking Academy today! You’ll get access to all the in-depth baking courses both past and present, access to the Bold Baking Academy Community, and the one-of-a-kind Baking Concierge — which is a fast & direct connection to Gemma & her team of culinary experts to answer any baking question you might have.

That’s right, inside or out of the Academy! So subscribe now!

Full (and printable) recipe below!

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