Gemma’s Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe
Save RecipeI’ll show you how to make the Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe and why it will give you a perfect chocolate chip cookie every time!
Hi Bold Bakers!
As a pastry chef for years, I know a thing or two about cookies 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 recipe and my Bold Baking Tips below and I’ll show you how to make chocolate chip cookies like you’ll find in your favorite bakery or restaurant.
Watch my Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe Video!
Why Are These The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies?
What makes this the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, you might ask? First of all this 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. I get asked a lot, “How do you make cookies chewy not cakey?” and this is one of the ways to do it.
Serious Chocolate Chunkage
The next thing that makes this the perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe 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. These chocolate chunks along with 2 rich eggs, 1 cup of butter, and of course the brown and white sugar, really do take these cookies to the next level.
Now if you don’t eat eggs, you can always use my egg substitute chart and still enjoy my cookies.
[ Vegan? Try my Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe! ]
Should You Age Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough?
YES! As a pastry chef, I used to age my dough 3 to 5 days in advance because aging your dough over time helps develop more flavor and gives a lovely texture to your cookies. Just cover them with cling wrap in your bowl and they’ll keep just fine in the refrigerator.
If you don’t want to age it, you can just chill your dough for 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.
How long does it take to bake a chocolate chip cookie?
Last but not least, my recipe calls for 1/4 cup of dough for each nice and big cookie and they bake for exactly 12 minutes. This means the cookies are ooey-gooey on the inside, crisp on the outside, and with perfect pockets of melted chocolate chunks.
Honestly, just writing this is making my mouth water. These are the ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies and I cannot wait to hear what you Bold Bakers think! Please leave a review and your comments below. And make sure to submit your own photos on this page for everyone to see!
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Chef-tested and approved, I will show you how to make my Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe and why it will give you perfect chocolate chip cookies!
- 1 cup (8 oz/226g) butter
- 1¼ cups (7 1/2oz/212g) light brown sugar
- ¾ cup (6oz/170g) white granulated/caster sugar
- 2½ cups (12 1/2oz/354g) all-purpose flour/plain flour
- 1½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 large eggs*
- 2 teaspoon vanilla extract , optional
- 2 cups (12oz/340g) bittersweet chocolate chunks
- Whisk the flour, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl. Set aside.
- In a separate bowl melt the butter. Add in both white and brown sugars and whisk vigorously for about 1 minute.
- Whisk in one egg to the sugar-butter mixture, stirring until it's fully mixed in. Scrape the sides of the bowl with your spatula.
- Whisk in the second egg and the vanilla and scrape the sides of bowl again.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir with the spatula to fully combine. Make sure you've scraped the bottom of the bowl and there are no streaks of dry ingredients left. Stir in the chocolate chips. The dough will be soft but DON'T add more flour. It needs to be chilled now to firm up.
- IMPORTANT NOTE: Chill the dough for a minimum of 1 hour. This will make it easier to scoop and you cookies will keep their shape better while baking. (This dough can be made and kept in the fridge for 7 days. The dough also freezes really well)
- Scoop 14 balls of cookie dough (1/4 cup/100g each) and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Leave some space between the cookies as they spread out during baking.
Bake the cookies at 375°F (190°C) for 12 minutes, or until the edges are set and the cookie is beginning to turn golden brown throughout, but still doughie in the middle. It is really important you don't over bake these cookies otherwise the won't be soft in the middle.
- Let cool on the sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Store them at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 3 days. #
- The raw dough can be frozen for up to 8 weeks.
Watch the Recipe Video!
If you want to replace the eggs use any of the replacements for cookies on my egg substitutes chart. Just note your results will not be exactly the same as mine.
If you don't have Brown Sugar you can easily make it at home.
Bittersweet chocolate is about 70% cocoa solids. You will find this information on the label of a good chocolate bar.
*Aging the dough: Make and store the dough in the fridge for up to 7 days. The flavor and texture will just get better over time.
Meet Gemma
Hi Bold Bakers! I’m Gemma Stafford, a professional chef originally from Ireland, and I’m passionate about sharing my years of experience to show you how to make game-changing baking recipes with over-the-top results! Join more than 1 Million other Bold Bakers in the community for new video recipes every week!
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Just beautiful cookies , nice and soft centre
Awesome! I’m delighted to hear that 🙂
Best,
Gemma.
Hi Gemma,
Thanks a lot for the recipe. Last time my cookies were turned out just perfect but today the batter is not spreading at the time of baking. Can you please tell me what is the problem🙁
I’m feeling so sorry seeing them ☹️
Hi Deb,
Now I feel sorry too! No idea why that would happen, though a change in any of the ingredients may indeed do it, even the flour! If they have been in the freezer then that would change things too, but other than that, I am stumped 🙁
I hope they baked well in the end, a little push down to the top may have helped, but you could not have known that,
Gemma 🙂
Hi Gemma, I just recently discovered your YouTube channel and have started trying out your best ever recipes. Thank you for sharing such easy to make yet delicious baked goodies. I made chocolate chip cookies today and baked them for 12 minutes but when I checked it, they were still soft to the touch. Left them in the oven for another 5 minutes and still soft to the touch. Is this normal?
Hi Kaisa,
Welcome to the BBB community! really glad you like my recipes. I’m not 100% sure without seeing a picture of what you mean by soft. If the dough was raw and didn’t bake then something is wrong.
Did they look like mine at all?
Gemma.
Soft as in my finger would sink into the cookie. I’ve uploaded a photo of it but it is still waiting approval from admin I think. Cookies were cooked and not raw (although over baked). Made a second batch and cooked precisely to instructions. Again it was soft to the touch and it wasn’t crisp on the edges and soft middle, cookies were just crunchy all around lol but still delicious.
Hi Kaisa,
Can you tell me about your oven?
Something not right here, I am thinking the oven thermostat may be a touch off. Are you noticing this with any other cooking/baking?
It is a conundrum!
Gemma 🙂
Hello Gemma,
I tried to comment yesterday but I think my comment got lost or I did something wrong. Anyway, I will re-post here.
Being a health-nut I substituted the wheat flour with home ground spelt flour. When you use spelt flour in place of wheat flour you reduce the amount of liquid by 25% because spelt flour doesn’t need as much liquid as wheat. Now in this recipe you use eggs and they are difficult to reduce as liquid. In this case I increased the flour amount by 10% per each egg coming to a total of 400g or 3 cups of whole spelt flour. I also increased the baking soda to 2 teaspoons. They turned out great just like you said! This next next time I will also add some walnuts to the dough. Thank you for sharing the recipe. Blessings, Elfriede
Hi there,
I think I saw this yesterday and responded! The comments have to wait for me to see them to respond, they get backed up a little sometimes. I was really interested in the idea of grinding your own flour, and other bold bakers will be interested in this too. You have a scientific mind, you worked all of this out so well. Thank you for this input,
Gemma 🙂
Hello Gemma,
Being a health-nut, I decided to substituted the all purpose flour with home ground whole spelt flour. When you use spelt flour in place of wheat flour you need to reduce the liquid by about 1/4, however, when your liquid consists of eggs like in your recipe this is hard to do. So I increased the amount of spelt flour by 20% (=10% per egg) to a total of 400g = 3 cups. I increased the baking soda to 2 teaspoons and used unsalted butter. I did not add salt because the baking soda is salty enough for me. The cookies turned out great, just the way you described them. This time around, I just made a batch which is in the fridge now for tomorrow, I added some walnuts to the chocolate chip cookie. I really like the idea to have dough in the fridge ready to go whenever you like a fresh cookie. Works great! Thank you for sharing your recipe.
Hi there,
What I love about you very bold bakers is how happy you are to share your tips and tricks here on the website. Thank you so much for that. I know that the grain for the spelt flour will not be available everywhere, but it will trigger ideas in other people. That is really great input. I am delighted this recipe worked well for you, you are a scientist, great that you worked it out so well.
Many thanks,
Gemma 🙂
Thanks! I’ll definetly try it sometime😊
Hi Gemma, im from Perú and here the flour is catalogued in “prepared” and “not prepared”, the main difference is that for the first one you wont need baking powder. I tried to make this cookies yesterday with prepared flour and missed out the baking soda and turned out very inconsistent. I couldn´t grab them without them cracking. Do you think that this is because i missed out the baking soda?
Thank you in advance!!! i love your recipes!
Hi Krizia,
Baking soda has more than one purpose in a bake, it works against the sugars too to crisp, caramelize if you will, to hold a cookie together. Your prepared flour has a raising agent, and this type of cookie does not use a raising agent, it makes it a bit cakey, and could indeed make it crumbly.
There may also be an altitude issue here, but you probably would know how to overcome that.
I hope this is of help. It is best, if you are a baker, to keep the unprepared flour in your home, and the raising agent separate to that, it allows for flexibility in your baking and ensures a fresh raising agent (baking powder) too.
I hope this is of help,
Gemma 🙂
Thanks a lot for your response!
Hi Gemma!
My favorite dessert ever are chocolate chip
and my second favorite is your chocolate chip cookie pie!
I already have a recipe of chocolate chip cookies that I double most of the time because I eat one batch by myself hehe…….
but I will use your recipe as well as you are my most trusted baker!
but I’m a bit skeptical about using light brown sugar, I always buy dark but accidentally got light this time and your recipe says light tpo but maybe mine’s too light )-: do you think I can replace some of the light brown sugar with honey?
oh and for some reason, I keep getting logged out from my account whenever I click on a recipe anywhere, whether it’s after searching for one or from my saved recipes
Hi there,
First of all thank you for your kind words.
I will pass the tech issue on to the tech people, we are constantly working to improve the website, and we get occasional glitches.
If you have dark brown sugar, you can mix that with some of your light one, that will give you a nice balance. Remember dark brown sugar is rich in retained molasses and tends to be very moist, this can affect a recipe too.
I would not add a liquid sugar, like honey, to this recipe.
Do try this recipe, follow it as closely as possible, all will be well. Don’t forget to let us see the results, before you eat them all 😉
Gemma <3
Gemma 🙂
The tech issue is resolved for me now!
I followed the recipe almost exactly as it is but was tempted to replace 1/2 cup with dark brown sugar because the cookies were for a friend too and I didn’t want to take any chances,
but I put more trust in your recipe and only replaced 1/4 cup with dark.
Dark brown sugar my favorite ingredient, you see.. I love to use in hot chocolate, chilli sauce for chicken etc hehe.
The cookies were even better than my previous ones would be which I didn’t think was possible! Chewy on the inside, crispy on the outside… You are magical!
Also, I would like to tell you I really appreciate you reading and responding to every comment on your blog and your YouTube channel (that’s a LOT of comments!!!) Thank you for caring about Bold Bakers so much (-:
I got the issue again when I was trying to upload a picture of the cookies
I found that sometimes while logging in, you get the “humanity” test and most times you don’t.
The issue doesn’t happen only when I do get the humanity test
I’m so sorry about this. We are working in resolving this issue as I know this is very frustrating.
Bare with us,
Gemma.
delighted to hear it is resolved!!!
These are my absolute favorite cookies 🙂
Gemma.
These cookies are indeed the “BEST EVER” chocolate chip cookies!
They are very easy to make and very yummy in taste!
If I were to bake my first cake then which cake should I bake? Can u please help me out with it?
I’m so happy to heat that, i would suggest my best ever chocolate cake 😀
Those look amazing!
Thank you:D