These Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies are perfect for folks who want a cookie that melts in your mouth. Rich buttery dough sprinkled with semi-sweet chocolate chips create one of the best chocolate chip cookies you will ever have! If you are looking for other Cookie Recipes check these out, and be sure not to miss my favorite Easter cookie recipe, Cutout Sugar Cookies!
Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
Does the world need a new Soft Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe? Probably not. Scratch that…. yes it does! You can never go wrong with chocolate chip cookies.
This dough does require chilling and I don’t recommend skipping that step. But unlike the award-winning Chocolate Chip Cookies, you don’t have to chill for 48 hours, just an hour. (Or up to overnight if you can take it!)
How to Bake Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sifting Dry Ingredients – Sift dry ingredients like flour, baking powder, and baking soda to combine and aerate them helps make for fluffier cookies. To sift, simply combine your dry ingredients and pour into in a fine-mesh strainer. Tap or shake the strainer until everything’s in your bowl. Even if sifting is not called for, you can whisk the dry ingredients for 30 seconds to fully combine.
Creaming Butter and Sugar – Unlike stirring or mixing, creaming isn’t about combining ingredients, it’s about aerating them. Creaming creates air pockets that expand in the oven, making the dough tender. When you add sugar, that process is more effective. Sugar crystals are formed and the air is efficiently added to the butter and sugar mixture. Butter beats up fluffiest at room temperature, or when slightly softened.
Eggs – Eggs should be added at room temperature. They add moisture to the air pockets and flavor to the dough. To quickly warm eggs, place them in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes. After the eggs have been added you should also add the vanilla extract or sometimes milk (also room temperature) if the recipe calls for it.
3 Tips for the PERFECT Soft Chocolate Chip Cookie
- Make sure the room-temperature butter is creamed, not melted. If the butter is too warm the cookie will end up denser (I find that butter out of the refrigerator for 30 minutes is a good temperature.)
- Sugar is important! This recipe is mostly brown sugar which helps the cookie to be taller and more cake-like in texture. If you were to use only white sugar the cookie would spread more. When the goal is a soft cake-like cookie, brown sugar is a must!
- Chilling the dough is important. I often want to skip this step but it truly is necessary. A few hours is good, but 1 day is better!
Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup (2 sticks or 226g) unsalted butter, softened
- ½ cup (100g) granulated sugar
- 1½ cups (300g) packed brown sugar
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon (4g) baking soda
- 2 teaspoons (8g) hot water
- ½ teaspoon (.5g) salt
- 3 cups (375g) all-purpose flour
- 2 cups (350g) semisweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- In a stand mixer with paddle attachment, cream together the butter, sugar, and brown sugar until smooth.
- Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add in the vanilla.
- Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt.
- Remove bowl from stand mixer and stir in flour and chocolate chips.
- Wrap dough in plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour, or up to overnight.
- When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare cookie sheets with silpat or parchment paper.
- Remove roughly 1-2 tablespoons of dough (depending on the size of cookie you prefer) and roll into a ball with your hands. Drop onto prepared pans. (I had 6 dough balls per cookie sheet)
- Bake for about 8-10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are JUST barely browning. These cookies are best when slightly UNDER done.
Did you make this recipe?
Thank you for making my recipe! You took pictures, right? Well go ahead and post them on Instagram! Be sure to mention me @iambaker and use the hashtag #YouAreBaker.
To Janet Burch, and others the have flattening cookies. Maybe try 1-2 Tblspn of cornstarch to flour. It seems to plump up the cookie.
Can you change up the chips? Like I want to try white chocolate or butterscotch chips..and is the filling you made straight up buttercream frosting?
After making a recipe exactly as written the first time, I never follow it again. However, THIS recipe is perfect as it is and I will never tweak it. Allowing the dough to sit for 24 hours is a must as the flavors meld together. My family does not like “plump” cookies, but this cookie was the exception. It truly is a delicious cookie and a dough that’s easy to whip up.
Love these recipes 😋
Love this recipe. Took the batch to a meeting and not one cookie was left by the end of the meeting. I did sift my flour. The cookies were soft and delicious.
These are amazing! Thanks for all the tips!
So I made two batches. In one batch I added a fresh vanilla Bean and those turned out superb. Both batches are kinda flat but have a crunch to outside but soft inside. I think placing the one batch on the top shelf of fridge made the dough hard to work with and not turn as good as the cookies with the vanilla that I placed on the bottom shelf of fridge. I did leave them in fridge for 24 hours. I will be making these again next year. Thanks!
Britt
Really good! Easy to make. Baking took about 14 minutes each sheet.
I made this multiple times with my 2 teenagers they loved it!
I made these today with my little grand daughters ages 8, 5, 1, and they were the greatest hit. We followed the recipe to a T as my 8 yr dictated the easy steps. We couldn’t stop eating them after they were baked. Actually, they loved the raw dough as well. Love your recipes!