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
I’ve never made cookies from scratch before and I do not bake. However, I could not find bakery chocolate chip cookies that I really liked so I decided to try this because I’m bringing them to my book club and wanted them to be really good. These came out perfectly!!! I followed all your tips — including chilling overnight, freezing the balls, making them more like towers, adding a minute to the time and using a spoon to shape them. I also followed your instructions on putting one sheet in at a time, only using room-temperature sheets, cooking on parchment paper and cooling for ten minutes before putting on rack. Thank you so much for this recipe and all your tips– and especially for explaining why we should do things in certain ways.
Perfect. Absolutely perfect.
These were incredible. I was impatient and made two cookies before chilling the rest of the dough and they still worked out great.
I would like to make these for a friend who is gluten free. Can I just substitute the flour 1:1 for GF flour? Anything else I should change? These are my favourites!
Hi Steph, we haven’t tested that swap here, but a few readers have reported success doing so. Let us know if you give it a try!
Hi Sally,
My question is about your cookies, specifically the chocolate chip cookies. Since I am a very slow baker, I was wondering if I could refrigerate the cookie dough balls AFTER they have been formed into cookies in order to keep them from spreading in the oven. I know that the cookie dough needs to be chilled in the refrigerator BEFORE it’s formed into cookie dough balls, but what about AFTER it’s been formed into cookie dough balls? If I can refrigerate the formed cookie dough balls before I put them in the oven, how long should I refrigerate them for? I really need to know the answer to this question. Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
Patty Cleveland
Hi Patty, yes, you can definitely do that! Refrigerate the dough and then form the balls, then refrigerate them again and bake when you are ready. We use this same technique for freezing cookie dough.
Made these twice and practice definitely does make perfect.
My first attempt wasn’t too bad but it wasn’t how I wanted them to turn out. I felt that they came out too greasy and that was probably bc I added a little too much butter/brown sugar. I also only let the cookie dough chill in the fridge for about 3 hours, it didn’t feel like enough time. Oh and I put all the “wet” ingredients all together at once instead of one by one lol.
My second attempt was today. I did the exact measurements on the recipe but I was very careful for it to be exactly 3/4 of butter and brown sugar. I also put in the butter and sugars together, mixed, then added the egg, mixed, then added the vanilla. I made the dough yesterday and let it chill overnight. Then baked them for just 13 minutes. Best choice I made because the cookies came out way better than my first attempt. I love this recipe
Excellent cookies. I took them to a party and they didn’t last long!
Can these be baked without the choco chips? My son just loves the cookie part but not so much the chocolate chips
Hi Lv, yes, you could do that. Or you might want to try this recipe for chewy brown sugar cookies. Enjoy!
Best recipe I’ve tried! It’s now my go-to, hit the spot, melty, chewy, thick cookie favorite. Thank you!!!!
Not healthy. Cant eat white flour, sugar or butter. Unhealthy recipe!
Why even comment if you did not make the recipe? No one else needs to know your diet restrictions.
they’re cookies… they’re going to be unhealthy
I’m 82 and have made and eaten chocolate chip cookies all my life. I baked them for my kids, my grandkids, and now for my neighbors. They can’t possibly be too unhealthy since I survived this long eating them. Great recipe!
I have made many recipes for CC and bake regularly but this is my second time trying this recipe and it was a disaster! The dough was super tough both times and way too dense, I tried to doctor with more butter and milk after chilling which at least made the second batch edible! Followed the recipe closely what am I doing wrong!? I’m sure I’m missing something here
Hi Megan, we’re happy to help troubleshoot. Did you make any substitutions at all? And how did you measure your flour–with cups or by weighing with a kitchen scale?
Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies are my absolute favorite! There’s just something about that soft center and gooey chocolate that hits the spot every time. Can’t wait to try this recipe!
I’ve been baking cookies for almost 50 years and made at least a dozen different recipes for chocolate chip cookies. These are the best! Perfect combination of chewy and crispy and they don’t get flat!
Do you think subbing the sugar with allulose would work? I’m just now experimenting with it and this is our favorite cookie recipe.
Hi HB! We’d love to help but we are not trained in baking with sugar substitutes. For best taste and texture (and so you don’t waste your time trying to adapt this recipe since it may not work properly), it may be more useful to find a recipe that is specifically formulated for sugar substitutes. Thank you!
I made these twice. First time only refrigerated the dough for 2 hours, and the cookies turned out 5 star! Second time refrigerated overnight, brought to room temperature before baking, and they were only 2 star. They didn’t spread at all after being refrigerated, and they were more like cakey hockey pucks than the glorious crispy chewy flats that came out of the oven when I refrigerated them only 2 hours. That’s how I’ll make them from now on.
A tip for adding the chocolate chips is to coat the in a little of your dry ingredients and they are easier to mix in. My family also loves to have part of the chips peanut butter. These cookies are just fantastic. As my brother in law says ( Great coffee dippers).8
This recipe is so easy to follow and comes out perfect every time. I make sure I use fresh flour and mini chocolate chips. The cookies are always a big hit and never last. I’m going to make it into a cookie cake today!
Wonderful recipe, I will definitely make again. I have made many recipes from this site and every single one is a winner! Thank you Sally!
Can you use shortening in this recipe?
Hi Kayleigh, this wouldn’t be a great choice for that swap because this recipe requires melted butter. Shortening can usually be swapped out for recipes that call for softened butter that you cream with sugar.
Hi! What can I use instead of baking soda?
Hi Michelle, baking soda is required for this recipe.
Hello,
I’m trying to work out when you say melted butter vs softened butter, are they different states of butter? you say melted is the best for this recipe, is it just melting in a microwave or should i soften it and use for this recipe, both look a tad different
Hi Hannah! These cookies use melted butter, not softened. We usually melt it in the microwave.
Thank you Sally, I halved measuments in your recipe and they came out great and not as flat as my previous attempts, didn’t refrigerate overnight though so will repeat process until i get it right, this time round i also tried not to overmix the ingredients.
I thought I had the best chocolate chip cookie recipe and although those cookies brought me plenty of praise over a lot of years, this cookie IS the best ever! These didn’t flatten a lot when I refrigerated the dough overnight. I followed the recipe exactly, including forming little barrel shapes out of the balls I rolled. This is my chocolate chip cookie recipe now!
PERFECTION. That is all!
Followed the recipe to the letter – they were delicious, but ended up spreading a ton and were super flat, even after chilling overnight! Bummer, since the whole reason I tried this recipe were the promises of thickness. Usually Sally never misses, but this one disappointed on that metric.
I followed the recipe as is and my cookies came out super flat. They still taste great though. Not sure what I did that caused them to be so flat.
Hi Eden, here are our best tips to prevent cookie spreading. This might be helpful to troubleshoot! Hope it helps for next time.
This is my fave ever recipe. Trying to think how to modify to make it red velvet cookies. Do you have a recipe for those?
Hi Clare, We’re so glad you enjoy this recipe. You’ll love these red velvet chocolate chip cookies!
This is my only go to recipe for Cookies! My entire family love them! They never fail! Thank you for such a great recipe! You are the best!
Hi! I baked from that recipe couple a times. Cookies are always delicious, everybody loves them! Unfortunately I always have same problem- my cookies never get into that nice shape as yours, they don’t even overspread when I don’t put it in the fridge. Dough is always thick. What could I be doing wrong?
Hi Aleks! Sounds like 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.
This cookie recipe is the gold standard for me. I basically always have a batch worth in my freezer so we can have fresh cc cookies whenever the urge strikes. Whenever I start running low on the previous batch I just make a new one for the freezer. That’s what I’m doing today. Thought I’d comment and share my love while I wait for the dough to chill. Thank you so much for this recipe and so many others. Any time I think of a new treat i’d like to make i try looking on this website to see if you’ve done it and 9/10 times you have. Thank you again!
I love this recipe, I usually forget that it has to chill. But if you make small cookies is it necessary to chill the dough?
Hi Abbie! Yes, we still recommend chilling the dough so they don’t spread too much.