Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
By Alexandra Stafford
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Last Updated: 06/17/2025
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
Soft and chewy, perfectly sweet, and loaded with chocolate, these cookies are irresistible. Read on to learn my 6 tips for making excellent chocolate chip cookies every time. Bonus: these cookies are easily made gluten-free — see recipe box for details 🍪🍪🍪
Lightly adapted from a Fine Cooking recipe, this is the soft and chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe I’ve been making for over 20 years. During these past two decades, I’ve refined my method and measurements, and while I can’t promise I won’t make more tweaks, these cookies are near perfection.
6 Tips for Perfect Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies:
- A scale is best for accurate measuring of ingredients.
- Butter should be at room temperature. I always use salted butter.
- Chocolate: Over the years I have made these cookies with various chocolate chips, from hard-to-find high-end chocolate pistoles (Guayaquil Pistoles Ecuadorian Cacao, 64% cacao) to readily available low-quality grocery store chips. My favorite now are these Guittard Super Cookie Chips, which I can find at many local grocery stores.
- Use a scale to portion the dough into 48-gram balls. This ensures each cookie bakes as evenly as the next.
- Chill the dough balls. The cookies taste even better when baked from dough balls that have been chilled. Keep unbaked balls in an airtight container in the fridge — they’ll last for weeks there. Bake off as you need.
- Bake cookies low and slow: I find baking the cookies for 19 minutes @ 325ºF creates the perfect shape and texture. Remove the tray from the oven and let the cookies cool completely on the cookie sheet. They will not look done when you pull them out of the oven. Have faith. Again, do not remove cookies from sheet pans until they are completely cool. I think these cookies taste best once they are completely cool.
How to Make Soft and Chewy Chip Cookies, Step by Step
First gather your ingredients: softened butter, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, salt, baking soda, chocolate chips and flour.
Note: I can no longer find these chocolate pistoles (see recipe box for details) so I’ve been using…
… these Guittard Super Cookie Chips, which I love.
First, combine the flour, salt and baking soda in a large bowl…
… and whisk until combined:
Next, place the softened butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer. Alternatively, use a handheld mixer or, if your butter is very soft, you can beat vigorously by hand.
When the butter and sugar are light and airy…
… add the eggs one at a time…
… followed by the vanilla extract:
Beat until smooth, then add the dry ingredients:
Beat until the dry ingredients are just combined…
… then add the chocolate chips:
If you are using an Ankarsrum mixer, fold in the chocolate chips by hand — those beaters aren’t cut out for this job:
Using a scale, portion the batter into 48 gram balls:
Tuck the pan into a large ziplock bag, then chill for at least 1 hour but ideally 24 hours.
When you are ready to bake, place the dough balls evenly spaced on parchment lined sheet pans and transfer to the oven.
I’ve included two baking methods below, one @ 375ºF for roughly 12 minutes (the original method): this creates a smaller-in-diameter cookie:
And one @ 325ºF for roughly 19 minutes. These cookies spread a little more:
Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Total Time: 1 hours 36 minutes
- Yield: 35 cookies
Description
Soft and chewy, perfectly sweet, and loaded with chocolate, these cookies are irresistible. I’ve been making them for over 20 years. The original recipe appeared in a 2003 Fine Cooking Magazine.
Notes:
- This recipe halves beautifully, too. When I make a half batch, I use two teaspoons of vanilla, and I use a scant teaspoon of kosher salt.
- Chocolate Chips: Honest Weight Food Coop no longer sells the chocolate wafers I loved so much for these cookies, and while I can find them online, they are astronomically expensive. I’ve been liking the Guittard Super Cookie Chips for these, but because they are slightly larger, I find I need to use more like 15 ounces of chips.
- Gluten Free: Cup4Cup Gluten-Free Flour works great here as a 1:1 swap for the flour.
- Sheet pans + parchment: I recently purchased 2 new sheet pans, which I have designated for cookies only, as well as a stash of parchment paper sheets (so handy!).
Ingredients
- 305 grams (1 1/3 cups) butter, softened, unsalted or salted (I always use salted)
- 290 grams (1½ cups packed) light brown sugar
- 220 grams (1 cup) granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 13 grams (1 tablespoon) pure vanilla extract
- 482 grams (3¾ cups) unbleached all-purpose flour
- 9 grams (1.5 teaspoons) Diamond Crystal kosher salt
- 6 grams (1 teaspoon) baking soda
- 340 grams (12 oz ) to 425 grams (15 oz) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips (see notes above)
- flaky sea salt for sprinkling, optional
Instructions
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and baking soda.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Scrape the bowl, beat again on high for one minute. Add the eggs, one at a time, followed by the vanilla, and beat until well blended, about another minute on medium-high speed.
- Add the dry ingredients to the mixer and beat very briefly, until just blended. Add the chocolate chips and stir till combined. The dough will be stiff.
- Portion the dough into 48-gram balls. This is a tedious task, but it makes for beautiful and uniform cookies that bake evenly. If you have a digital scale, this is easy; if you have no scale, use a small ice cream scoop or some other uniform measuring device —you should get 35-36 balls.
- Chill the portioned balls in an airtight bag or container for at least one hour, but ideally for at least 24 hours. Keep the balls in the fridge for up to a week or freeze for 3 months.
- Preheat Oven:
- Original Method: If you’ve made these cookies before and loved the method, continue to use it. Preheat oven to 375°F. Place portioned balls nicely spaced on an ungreased or parchment-lined sheet pan — I like to bake 6 cookies at a time. Sprinkle with sea salt if using. Bake for 11 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through cooking if your oven tends to have hot spots. Keep a close watch. You want to remove the cookies from the oven when they still look slightly raw—you will think you are removing them too early. The cookies will continue cooking as they sit on the tray out of the oven. Let cookies cool completely on tray before removing.
- Updated Method: I prefer this method as I find the cookies spread a teensy bit more, which I like. Preheat the oven to 325ºF. Place portioned balls nicely spaced on an ungreased or parchment-lined sheet pan — I like to bake 6 cookies at a time. Sprinkle with sea salt if using. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes. The cookies will still look slightly underdone when you remove them from the oven. Let the cookies cool completely on the sheet pan before transferring them to a cooling rack.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 11 minutes
- Category: Cookie
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
152 Comments on “Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies”
I made these cookies for a dinner and never got to try one, but they disappeared quickly. Taking off one star because 375 seemed too high of a temperature. The bottoms got too browned and smelled burnt as they were baking.
I baked in several batches and these cookies come out best straight from the fridge or freezer. They baked off into a weird shape when I let the balls rest a bit at room temp.
Great to hear, Alicia! You can definitely lower the temperature. Actually, for the chocolate chip cookie recipe I included in my latest pizza book, I bake them at 325ºF for 18 minutes, so try the lower temp next time around 🙂
Hi! I always make these and love them!! But I see your response in a recent comment saying to bake them at 325 and for 18 minutes. Is that for this recipe or another one?
Hi! That’s how I bake them for the recipe that’s in my new cookbook (Pizza Night… out in April), but that one is slightly different than this one. I imagine that bake time/method will work very well here though. A few thoughts: if you’re happy with them, don’t change a thing! If you want to experiment, you could bake off 4 cookies or so using the new lower temp/longer bake time. Let me know if you experiment!
Thank you!! I do sometimes notice the bottom of the cookies being somewhat burnt, but I also love the fact that they come out looking raw with the 11 min bake time. At 325 & 18 min, should the cookies still look like they aren’t done when being taken out? Love this recipe and just want to perfect it!
Very similar visual cues but I’d say with the 325 for 18 minutes, they look slightly more done than when baked for 11 minutes at the higher temp — they’ll be slightly more brown on the surface but still very very light, and they will not look fully cooked. Good luck!!
I made your cookie recipe this weekend. I do live at 6000ft elevation so I increased the flour to 520g as my go-to high-altitude adjustment. I weighed out each ingredient rather than used measuring cups. I rolled the cookies into 42 – 44g balls and stored them overnight in the refrigerator in an airtight container. This morning I baked 5 of them (sprinkled with fine sea salt) as a test batch at 375° on convection bake for exactly 11 minutes. I allowed the cookies to completely cool on my silpat-lined baking sheet. THESE ARE EXACTLY SOFT AND CHEWY AND THE BEST RECIPE FOR A CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE I HAVE EVER MADE. (And I have made CC cookies for 60 years…. Started as a kid…) Thank you for sharing this recipe, tips and noted. You may want to add high-altitude adjustment notes to the recipe. Next try: I will attempt them for my celiac (gluten-free) family members and see if they work using good GF flour as well.
Hooray!!! So fun to read all of this Gail. Thanks so much for writing and sharing your high-altitude notes. So helpful for others. And I hope your GF variations turn out just as well. I am hopeful because GF flours have come such a long way!
WE LOVE THESE COOKIES. This is my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe. In my oven, I’ve discovered that a 12-minute bake time creates the perfect gooey cookie. My family and I love these. I am celiac so I substitute Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1 gluten- free flour exactly per the recipe and they turn out perfectly. I measure each one out to be exactly 48g (worth the time). I put them in Snapware and store them in the refrigerator. That way I can make a few smaller batches over a couple of weeks and every cookie eaten is first out of the oven. Everyone says they are the best they’ve had. I will never try another recipe. Thank you for this, Ali!
Awww so nice to read all of this, Amy! Thanks so much for writing and sharing all of your notes. So helpful for others looking to make these gf. I also totally agree: it’s so worth weighing the dough balls to ensure they are exactly the same.
Amazing! These come out perfect – lightly crispy and oh so chewy 🙂
Great to hear Holly! Thanks for writing 🙂
Hii! I followed the recipe, used a kitchen scale but my dough came out liquidity 🙁 do you have any advice to prevent or fix this ? Thank you !
Strange! Sorry to hear this. Are you using a different flour? Are you confident in the accuracy of your scale? I’m not sure how to advise here, because the dough is definitely on the stiff side. You used softened butter as opposed to melted, right? I desperately need to add process shots to this post … it’s an old one.
Ali, I love this recipe and have made it at least 10 times! Can you help me figure out how to incorporate sourdough discard? Thanks!
Great to hear! I’m not sure as I’ve never done this… what’s tricky with subbing in discard for cookies (as opposed to pancakes or other bread recipes) is that there isn’t any water in cookie dough batter. So even if you subtract some of the flour in this recipe proportionally to how much discard you use, you’re still adding water to the equation, which will throw off the formula.
That’s where I was at with thinking about it! I might experiment and let you know! Thanks!
Yes I made this and will use this recipe from now on because the cookies are exactly the way I like them! I live in a motor home and my oven is very small, like microwave size and so this is a perfect way to make the dough and freeze it. Now I can bake a couple of cookies whenever my husband gets a craving. Thank you. By the way, I take it that the cookie balls need to be defrosted before baking?
So nice to read this, Marijke! Thanks so much for writing and sharing this. You can actually bake them directly from the freezer, but they might take a minute or two longer. It’s probably best to thaw them first, but if you are in a pinch, know that they can go straight to the oven from the freezer.
Hi
Do you have a gluten free recipe that does NOT have so much sugar. 2 1/2 c. Plus the sweetness in the chocolate chips make them too sweet!
Thank you
I don’t! Keep in mind, this recipe yields A LOT of cookies. If you do the math, it’s roughly 14 grams of sugar per cookie.
When you freeze the balls do they have to defrost completely before baking?
No! I do like to do the slower baking method when baking frozen cookie balls (325ºF for 18-20 minutes).