Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

Everyone loves chocolate chip cookies. Sweet, slightly salty, with little gems of melted chocolate sprinkled throughout…heavenly. While some prefer crispy and others prefer chewy, the fact remains: everyone loves chocolate chip cookies.

I have tried a lot of different recipes for them since I started baking them as a kid.  I think they were one of the very first things I learned to bake, actually. That’s how easy they are: a kid can make them with little to no help.

My ideal chocolate chip cookie is a bit crispy around the edges, soft and chewy in the middle, and not too sweet. This is the recipe I have been making for the past several years and it is both easy and reliable. Perfect cookies every time, as long as you stick to the formula.

Perfect, you say?

I do say. Try me.

 Printable Recipe 

1 1/4 c all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 c packed light brown sugar
1/4 c white sugar
1/2 c butter, softened
1 egg, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 c chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375° F.

Mix flour, salt and baking soda together with a whisk, set aside.

Cream butter and sugars together until light and fluffy, add egg and vanilla. With mixer on low/slow speed, gradually add flour mixture to butter and sugar mixture a little at a time until incorporated. Add chocolate chips.

Using a large scoop disher (mine is 3 tbsp), scoop dough onto baking sheets, 6 scoops per sheet. Allow 2-3 inches between each scoop for cookies to spread.

Bake 5 minutes on the top rack of your oven, then rotate the sheet 180° (so the back row is now in the front) and bake 5-6 more minutes. (This works best in my oven, you can skip rotating the sheet pan if you’re confident your oven heats evenly.)

Cool cookies on the pan 2 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

Using a disher to portion out the dough onto the baking sheet ensures your cookies are all the same size and bake in the same amount of time. My disher is a 3 tbsp size, which yields generously sized cookies.

Isn’t that the best kind? Then you can pat yourself on the back for eating just one. Maybe.

You can get a 13th cookie out of this batch if you scrape down the bowl completely and add a few chocolate chips to the dough you scoop up.

Or you can just eat that delicious cookie dough while no one is looking and it’ll be our secret, because the recipe does say it yields 12 cookies.  The secret 13th cookie is my gift to you, fellow baker. I hope you eat that thing yourself, raw dough or baked. You deserve it.

You can see here I’m using a non-stick silicone baking mat. These things are AWESOME and while you can definitely bake perfect cookies without them, I highly recommend them. They ensure even browning and your cookies will never stick to the pan.

I confess, I bought my mats a few years ago but I didn’t start using them until earlier this week. I have very nice baking sheets from Williams Sonoma that I use for all of my baking and I don’t usually have a problem with sticking, so I never got around to the silicone mats.

That was dumb on my part, friends. Really. If you have the tools, use them. The mats work even better than my fancy sheet pans did without them, and guess what? When I put them on my junky, not-from-Williams-Sonoma sheet pans, I got exactly the same results. Get the mats. They are cheap, easy to clean, and awesome insurance for great cookies every time. And if you take care of them, they will last you forever.

Delicious. Easy and absolutely delicious. Everything a cookie should be.

Enjoy!

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