This Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe will give you all the information you need to bake wonderful soft, sweet, chocolate dotted cookies. Is there anything that fresh homemade cookies don’t make feel better? At the end of a hard day at work, a difficult day at school or just because you want something good and sweet to nibble on – these are the cookies you need.
This is a very easy cookie recipe. The baked cookies have a lovely chewy centre and just the right amount of chocolate. This recipe doesn’t have any complicated steps or difficult to find ingredients so I think that you’re going to love it. I’m not going to share how many attempts it took me to get this recipe right but it was definitely a few.
Why you want these cookies
- they are so deliciously, chocolatey
- they are soft and chewy
- fresh homemade cookies! Is there any need to say more?
- they make a brilliant sweet snack with your favourite drink
Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe: Ingredients
This cookie recipe uses pretty ordinary ingredients that are quite readily available in most places. That’s one of the good things about this recipe… that you don’t need exotic ingredients to enjoy wonderfully chewy chocolate chip cookies.
It contains;
- butter – softened and unsalted. The benefit of using unsalted butter is that you can add in salt to your recipe as a flavour enhancer and be in total control of the amount used. Softening the butter also makes it easier to work with.
- sugars – this recipe uses two types of sugar, white and soft brown sugar. These add sweetness and a little flavour, some nice caramel notes alongside the lovely chocolate.
- vanilla extract – again this is for flavour and it really goes well with anything chocolate.
- flour – plain white flour or all-purpose flour is the structure of the cookie.
- bicarbonate of soda & salt – the bicarbonate of soda helps to give a rise and the salt is for flavour. Omit the salt if you use salted butter.
- chocolate chips – a star player in a chocolate chip cookie recipe so it’s important that you use your favourite type of chocolate. If you’re making these for children or sweet toothed adults then you will probably be better off choosing milk chocolate chips. To appeal more to adults or those who aren’t so sweet toothed then maybe use dark chocolate ones instead.
Tips for Cookie making Success
Achieving a gorgeous chewy and thick cookie is probably simpler than you might imagine. Just bear the following points in mind as you make your dough.
- measure all your ingredients accurately. It makes such a difference. This is why I always use digital scales when I’m baking. It only takes a few extra grams or ounces of an ingredient to cause a recipe to fail so weighing your ingredients will help you be successful.
- use an oven thermometer to ensure that your oven temperature is correct. It’s surprising how they differ and again that can affect how successful your baking is.Try to avoid overworking the dough.
- to try and avoid that happening this recipe mixes the butter with the sugar first and then adds the other ingredients just enough to incorporate everything together.
- Mix the butter with the sugar until it is really well combined and wonderfully fluffy.
- Beat in the egg and vanilla until it is just combined.
- Add in the flour, baking soda and salt and again just combine the ingredients together so that there are no patches of flour left. You do not want to overmix the dough or it will give a tougher cookie.
- Allow the chocolate chip cookie dough to rest, preferably in the refrigerator, either as cookie sized balls or as dough. Resting the dough overnight will improve the texture of the cookie and deepen the flavour.
- Resting the dough in the refrigerator will cool it down so that it doesn’t spread as far when baking giving you a thicker cookie.
- If you don’t have time to fuss with cooling and refrigerating then skip this step and go straight to baking.
- Space them out on the baking tray – 6 to a tray is enough.
- Choose the correct length of time for baking the cookies – 8-10 minutes if cooking without resting or refrigerating first and 10 – 12 minutes if they have been rested or refrigerated.
- Remove from the oven when the edges are golden brown and the middle is still soft.
- Leave to cool on the tray for around five minutes before moving them to a cooling rack to continue cooling.
Variations to this easy cookie recipe
- You can use any kind of chocolate, milk or dark, chips, chunks or your favourite bar chopped up. A pretty change to the original recipe is to use half white and half dark chocolate chips. This gives a lovely swirl of different colours.
- If you don’t like vanilla in your Chocolate Chip Cookies then leave it out – the cookies will still be awesome.
- Adding in 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon makes a nice change and enhances the other flavours as does the grated zest of a medium-sized orange. Quite lovely!
How do I make Chocolate Chip Cookies all the same size
I would never want anyone to make their beautiful homemade cookies look like those that come straight of a production line and sold neatly wrapped in cellophane or boxes. However, a little eveness can be pleasing so if you’ve ever wondered how to get uniformly sized cookies, this is how.
Apologies if this is completely obvious to you but if you want evenly sized cookies that are pretty uniform in size and thickness then you need to pay attention to the amount of dough that you scoop out onto the baking tray.
What I like to do is to use a square piece of baking parchment which I place on my digital scales. I can zero this to make sure that the paper doesn’t affect the weight of anything I place on it. I then take my cookie scoop or a tablespoon and use it to scoop out small amounts of dough and place them on this piece of parchment.
Each amount should weight roughly the same. Fot this recipe I aimed for 55g/2 ounces of the dough, gently made a spherical ball with the dough, placed it on the baking sheet. I did this to all the balls of dough.
Once baked they’ll all be roughly the same size. Beautifully uniform and quite delicious.
What if I don’t want to cook all the dough at once?
The answer is to roll the dough in your hands into cookie-sized balls and place it in an airtight container in the refrigerator. A plastic bag will also do the trick. When you’re ready to bake them, place them on a lined baking tray and they’re good to go. Fresh cookies anyone?
How to store chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
To maintain the freshness of these simple chocolate chip cookies, once they are out of the oven, keep them in an airtight container. They’ll stay fresh for between 5 and 7 days, but I doubt there’ll be any left by then.
What is your favourite kind of cookie?
If you like these… you may like…
- How to make Lemon Cookies
- Easy Peanut Butter Cookies
- Soft and Chewy Oat and Raisin Cookies
- Chocolate chip Cookies
- Easy Oat and Coconut cookies
- Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
- Easy Shortbread Cookies
- Soft and Chewy Oatmeal and Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Easy Ginger Cookies
- Baked Cinnamon Donuts Recipe
- White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies
- Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies
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Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe
Equipment
- baking sheet
- mixing bowl
- spoons
- Measuring equipment
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup caster sugar
- 1/3 cup soft light brown sugar
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour plain flour
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup chocolate chips/chunks
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C/160 C Fan). Line a baking sheet with baking parchment.
- Put the unsalted butter, sugar and salt into a large bowl and beat until creamy.
- Beat in the vanilla and egg. Sift in the flour, and bicarbonate of soda. Fold the mixture together with a wooden spoon, being careful not to overmix it.
- Add the chocolate chips or chunks and stir well to combine.
- Scoop out 2 tablespoon amounts of cookie dough onto the baking tray. Space them apart a little – 6 on each tray is about right.
- Bake for 10 minutes or until the edges of the cookie are light brown and still slightly soft in the middle.
- Leave on the baking tray for 5 minutes to cool before moving them onto a cooling rack.
Notes
Storing your cookies
Store these cookies in an air-tight container for up to a week.Nutrition
Why not Pin this Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe for later?
I literally can picture myself dunking these in ice cold milk. So easy and delicious.
Yum… now I think I need to go make another batch.