Flat and crispy chocolate chip cookies have their devotees – I’ve never been one of them. But the perfect soft chocolate chip cookie has been elusive. Some are too fluffy and cakelike, others too greasy, spreading in puddles across the baking sheet. What I’ve been trying for – OK, dreaming of – are these soft chocolate chip cookies: thick and pillowy, their tops like rolling hills, their gooey middles slightly under-baked, with a toffee-like flavor thanks to a generous splash of vanilla. To make them extra special, I amp up the chocolate, adding milk and white chocolate chips to the usual semisweet.
A well-known hack for making soft chocolate chip cookies is to add a bit of cornstarch to the dough – and it really does help. I started there and then played with proportions of the key ingredients (the ratio of flour to sugar to butter) until I got it just right.
Chilling the dough is another must-do, in order to keep the cookies from spreading. Keep the dough refrigerated between batches, and use enough cookie sheets so you’re never putting unbaked dough onto a warm-out-of-the-oven pan.
And here’s a final, pro tip. To give these cookies a bakery look, reserve a few of the chocolate chips and press them into the balls of raw dough before baking. As the cookies bake, the chips will sink in partway and peek out from the top of the cookies, hinting at all the chocolate hiding underneath.
With the ingredients and the technique nailed, I knew I’d achieved my version of chocolate chip cookie perfection. I then turned to my number one taste tester for his verdict. After snarfing down a handful and declaring them “the best soft chocolate cookies ever”, John told me his dirty little secret: he prefers his chocolate chip cookies flat and crispy. Ah, the traitor. Oh well – more for me.
Making these ahead and what to do with leftovers:
- These chocolate chip cookies will stay soft and moist for several days, stored in an airtight container at room temperature.
- The cookies can be frozen, either after they’ve baked, or as raw balls of dough. Thaw the raw dough in the refrigerator overnight before baking.
Soft Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies
One of the secrets to soft chocolate chip cookies is chilling the dough - for one hour or up to several hours - so plan ahead.
Ingredients
- 2¼ cups (9½ ounces or 270 grams) all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt, or ¼ teaspoon Morton’s
- ¾ cup (12 tablespoons) unsalted butter, preferably European-style, at soft room temperature
- 7/8 cup (¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons) brown sugar
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg, at room temperature
- 1 large egg yolk, at room temperature
- 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
- ½ cup (3 ounces) milk chocolate chips
- ½ cup (3 ounces) white chocolate chips
Directions
- Step 1 Combine the flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl and stir with a whisk until well combined.
- Step 2 Put the butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat on medium speed until fluffy, 2 minutes. Scrape down the bowl, then add the egg and then the egg yolk, one at a time, beating well and scraping the bowl after each addition. Beat in the vanilla, then scrape the bowl.
- Step 3 Add the dry ingredients and stir them in with just a couple of turns of the beater on low speed. In the same bowl that the flour was just in, combine the three types of chocolate chips and toss until they’re well mixed. Scoop out about 1/3 cup of the mixed chocolate chips and set them aside, then add the remainder of the chips to the dough, stirring in by hand with the spatula until the chips are evenly distributed throughout the dough and all the flour is fully incorporated. Don’t overmix the dough.
- Step 4 Chill the dough for 1 hour. Toward the end of the chilling time, heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line three large baking sheets with parchment.
- Step 5 Scoop out the dough using a cookie scoop or spoon, picking up about 2 tablespoons of dough per cookie. Roll the dough between your palms to form a neat ball and place it on one of the prepared sheets. Scoop and roll seven more cookies, arranging them on the baking sheet with plenty of room between them. Gently press a few of the reserved chocolate chips into the tops of the balls of dough without flattening the dough. Return the unused portion of the dough to the refrigerator to keep cold.
- Step 6 Bake the cookies for 10 to 11 minutes, just until the edges of the cookies are turning light golden brown. The middles of the cookies will still look underdone. Remove the baking sheet to a cooling rack and cool the cookies on the sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer them to the rack to cool completely.
- Step 7 Continue to keep the unused portion of the dough chilled while the current batch is in the oven, and use a cold baking sheet for the next batch. You should get about 30 cookies from this recipe, which means baking four batches (three batches of 8 and one batch of 6). By the time you get to the fourth batch, the baking sheet you used for the first batch should be cool enough to use again.
