With 30 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!
I originally published this recipe in 2013 and have since added new photos, a video tutorial, and more helpful success tips. This recipe is such a fan (and personal) favorite that I included it in my New York Times best-selling cookbook, Sally’s Baking 101.
One 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 beloved… and, a warning: they disappear FAST.
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.
I’ve 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.
One 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, pumpkin crumb cake 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, just like in these brown butter marshmallow crispy cookies. 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 or up to 3 days. I usually chill it overnight.
(No time to chill? Make these soft & chewy chocolate chip cookie bars, giant chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip cookie cake, or crispy chocolate chip cookie bark 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.
Because of the melted butter in this dough, the dough is very soft and a little greasy before chilling, so it’s harder to shape the cookie dough balls. We recommend chilling first, then shaping. If after chilling the dough is very hard and difficult to scoop, let it sit at room temperature for 15 minutes and then try again.
We typically do not recommend jumping right to the freezer without chilling the dough first. A quick freeze like that can cause the dough to chill unevenly and then spread unevenly during the baking process. For best results, we recommend following the recipe as written. If you don’t have time to wait for the dough to chill, try this recipe for 6 giant chocolate chip cookies instead, which doesn’t require dough chilling (see recipe Notes in that post for details on using the dough to make 24 regular-size cookies).
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 (with video tutorial).
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?
Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 13 minutes
- Total Time: 2 hours, 45 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. This recipe is also in my New York Times best-selling cookbook, Sally’s Baking 101.
Ingredients
- 2 and 1/4 cups (281g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch*
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup (170g/12 Tbsp) unsalted butter, melted & cooled for 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
- In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, cornstarch, and salt together. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together until no lumps remain. Whisk in the egg and egg yolk until combined, then whisk in the vanilla extract. The mixture will be thin. Pour into dry ingredients and mix together with a large spoon or spatula. The dough will be very soft, thick, and shiny. 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 refrigerate for at least 2 hours or up to 3 days. I highly recommend chilling the cookie dough overnight to prevent overspreading.
- Preheat oven to 325°F (163°C). Line large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. If the dough has chilled for longer than 2 hours, let it sit at room temperature for about 15 minutes.
- Using a cookie scoop or Tablespoon measuring spoon, scoop the chilled cookie dough, about 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, then use your fingers to shape the cookie dough so that it’s taller rather than wide—almost like a cylinder. This helps the cookies bake up thicker. Repeat with remaining dough. Arrange the cookies 3 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets.
- Bake the cookies for 13–14 minutes or until the edges are very lightly browned. The centers will look very soft, but the cookies will continue to set as they cool. Cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely. While the cookies are still warm, I like to press a few more chocolate chips into the tops—this is optional and only for looks!
- Store tightly 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 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 in a bowl 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 to 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.
Reader Comments and Reviews
My go-to cookie recipe, so easy and SO delicious – every time.
Awesome recipe good work!
Can u substitute cornstarch for something else. What’s the purpose of adding cornstarch to recipe and if leave it out what will happen if it won’t effect it then why add it
Hi Linda, the cornstarch helps to make the cookies extra soft and chewy. However, you can leave it out if you wish.
Love your cookies do you have a cannoli recipe, I would love to have it thank you,
Hi Linda, we do not have a cannoli recipe at this time—so sorry!
Yum!
But my cookies didn’t spread. Not sure why…
Hi Mariko, usually when cookies don’t spread, or when the dough becomes too crumbly, it’s because there is too much flour in the dough. How do 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. Thanks for giving these a try!
First time trying out this recipe. Was very good, although I think next time I’ll let them solidify enough so the dough is pliable so I can roll the cough and then completely chill them because WOO they were a doozey to attempt to roll even after 15 minutes out of the fridge. Otherwise, they came out a perfect consistency.
I only use this recipe, and I have earned a reputation for it! PLEASE POST THE RECIPE DOUBLED! I KNOW I COULD WRITE IT DOWN BUT THEN I WOULD LOSE IT! Thank you for your magic I trust you implicitly.
Hi Sally, I am trying this recipe for the first time and just realized I made a
mistake! I forgot to add the white sugar ( 1/2 cup ) I did add the brown sugar though.
The mixture is currently chilling in my fridge. Is it too late to add the sugar? Will it incorporate
properly?
Thanks in advance,
Alan McLean
Hi Alan, unfortunately, it’s a bit too late to add in the white sugar. You can try baking the cookies anyways, but keep in mind that the taste will be different, and without the white sugar, they may not spread properly. Best to start over with a new batch if you can!
So yummy! Loved this recipe.
I just realized this had to be chilled. Is it ok if it’s only chilled for 30 minutes?
These are seriously good! So easy to make compared to the other recipes I’ve tried and one of the best tasting. Super soft. My new go to recipe !!!
I love this recipe!! I know baking is a science, but do you have a recipe for lactation cookies that yield a similar taste/texture as this one?
We haven’t tried a lactation cookie using this recipe, but we have with these breakfast cookies! See that post for more details.
This recipe is so yummy but my cookies went so flat and I’m not sure why!
Hi Kenzie, we’re happy to help troubleshoot. There are a few different factors that can cause cookies to overspread. Be sure that your butter isn’t piping hot—letting it sit for about 5 minutes before mixing will help. Our post with 10 tips to prevent cookies from spreading will also be helpful to review for next time. We hope this helps!
Great recipe! Best cookies ever! I found that rolling into cylinders before chilling reduced chilling time to half an hour and mitigated flattening.
I love this recipe it is my only chocolate chip one I will use.
Is it a must to have to melt the butter? Or can I just use room temp butter?
Hi Danielle, melted butter is key to the chewy texture in these cookies. If you want to use room temperature butter, we’d recommend these chocolate chip cookies instead.
Hi. Great cookies! Can I make a cookie cake out of this recipe?
Hi R., our chocolate chip cookie cake recipe is adapted from this recipe and our soft chocolate chip cookies. Hope you enjoy it!
These turned out AMAZING! Hands down yhe best cookie recipe I have come by!! Hands down the best choc chip cookie recipe I have ever come by.. Do NOT forget to chill the dough. I chilled mine overnight and they came out perfect! Thank you for this wonderful recipe. Xx
i loved this recipe so much
it tasted divine i cant name a better recipe than this one, its so heavenly and most of the other cookies come out crumbly and dry but this was gooey and the perfect bake time
I loved these cookies! I followed the recipe exactly as written and read all of the tips. It came out just like the images and was ultra chewy and delicious and satisfied my cravings. This was my first time making cookies and it was literally the best cookies my partner and I have ever had and it was so easy to follow! This is definitely going to become a staple when I have a cookie craving!
This is the best chocolate chip cookie recipe I’ve tried to date. I will never use another recipe. Thanks for perfecting this for us. Your hard work is greatly appreciated.
can i use cassava starch instead of cornstarch?
Hi Nasha, we haven’t tested it, but you can simply leave out the cornstarch if needed. The cookies will still be plenty chewy.
This recipe is fantastic, but here are a few tweaks to make it even better!
– Brown the butter until golden for a caramel-like flavor, then mix with sugar. Add extra butter to account for loss during browning.
– For bite-sized portions, shape into 45g balls and bake for 10 mins at 180°C.
– For smaller sizes, use 40g balls and adjust baking time as needed.
I don’t know what I did wrong since I followed the recipe to a T, I refrigerated the dough overnight and by the following morning the dough was dry and crumbly. I hoped that the dough would soften and spread in the oven, but the cookies barely spread and stayed lumpy. I have no idea what went wrong, but I’m very disappointed.
Hi Sarah, usually when cookies don’t spread, or when the dough becomes too crumbly, it’s because there is too much flour in the dough. How do 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.
Truly a fantastic recipe. I actually used a rather large ice cream scoop and it made about 13 cookies. I’m lazy and I love big cookies so this works for me. The addition of bourbon vanilla paste from Trader Joe’s took these over the top. This is my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe even over Nestle Toll House.
I couldn’t make a decent chocolate chip cookie to save my life. Until I tried this recipe..I love it and now it’s my forever CCC recipe!!!
I’ve made many chocolate chip cookie recipes. I even have a go to one. This just far surpassed them all and is the new go to. Time to make up a second batch…
Can I put caramel sauce in the middle before baking?
Hi Layla, we don’t recommend caramel sauce, but you could try adding a caramel candy like we do with these caramel snickerdoodles or salted caramel dark chocolate cookies.
I love these cookies, they taste amazing and I make them often. However, they never turn out looking like the photos. They spread so much and are always quite thin. I have trie everything, including freezing them for 10 minutes before cooking, always using baking paper, and doing column shaped cookies. Please help!
Hi Ben, we’re happy to help troubleshoot. There are a few different factors that can cause cookies to overspread. Be sure that your butter isn’t piping hot—letting it sit for about 5 minutes before mixing will help. Our post with 10 tips to prevent cookies from spreading will also be helpful to review for next time. We hope this helps!
Mine didn’t turn out. They didn’t spread, they stayed a lump. I melted the butter and I mixed with a spoon and the dough was thick. I formed balls with my hands. They weren’t runny so I baked them right away, didn’t refrigerate. Normally things turn out when I follow a recipe. I’ll try again another time…. Maybe I measured wrong because I was expecting a smooth texture. I know the reason, my husband wants chewy cookies and anytime I try to make something for him it doesn’t turn out. Stuff I make that I like always turns out. It’s weird.
Hi Rose, the dough should definitely be slick and greasy, not thick. How did you measure your flour? It’s best to weigh it, or spoon and level it. Do not scoop the flour into the measuring cup.
It didn´t work out for me, I don’t know what I did wrong, the dough turne dough thick, help!!!
This is my go-to recipe for easy chocolate chip cookies, when I don’t feel like digging out the mixer. So soft and gooey! I sprinkle a bit of salt on the tops when I take them out of the oven, just my personal preference.
I only have salted butter . Will that work?
Hi Trish, If you only have salted butter you can use it and reduce the added salt to 1/8 teaspoon.
I’ve tried to make this recipe twice and both times they turned out very very flat. What am I doing wrong?
Hi Kayla, there are a few different factors that can cause cookies to overspread. Our post with 10 tips to prevent cookies from spreading will be helpful to review for next time.
This is my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. I’ve been using it since the pandemic. Thank you for sharing.