Soft & Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
These Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies use one special ingredient and a few straightforward tweaks make these the softest chocolate chip cookies you’ll ever eat! If soft and chewy is your jam, look no further for a fabulous cookie recipe!
Oh chocolate chip cookies. Truly the one and only cookie for us. When we see cookie trays or dessert tables, rarely does anything else tempt us the way a chocolate chip cookie does. Well, that’s a partial lie… we are equally drawn to peanut butter cookies of all shapes and sizes, but since they are currently off limits here because of Joseph’s allergies, it’s us and chocolate chip cookies for life.
Our friend Sally from Sally’s Baking Addiction has a new cookbook coming out next Tuesday, Sally’s Cookie Addiction, and it’s ALL cookies! We were able to get our hands on an advanced copy and we were going crazy with the doggy ears… there are SO MANY fantastic cookie recipes in this book. But the one we couldn’t wait to try was a new-to-us soft and chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe with one little secret ingredient (spoiler alert: it’s cornstarch!), and they were absolutely, positively as good as advertised.
It seems that every few years we find a new best chocolate chip cookie recipe… first it was the thick and chewy chocolate chip cookies (still a household favorite!), then it was the NY Times chocolate chip cookie (good but too big for everyday consumption), then we made our own favorite version from the NY Times recipe (but our husband didn’t love them), and now here we are at Sally’s soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies.
We had read about adding cornstarch to cookie dough before, but had never experimented with it myself.
All of the other tricks in this recipe to keep the cookies soft and chewy were old hat to us – melted butter, more brown sugar than white sugar, and adding an extra egg yolk.
But that cornstarch was new! We were interested to see what type of affect it would have on the cookies.
The result? Supremely soft cookies that are a dream. Even our favorite soft, thick and chewy cookies have some crisp edges, but not these… they are soft through and through, even after being stored for over three days, which typically never happens with our other recipes – they’ll start to harden a bit unless we wrap them individually in plastic wrap from the get-go.
The only place that we veered from the recipe was in the chocolate chip department. Our favorite “store-bought” chocolate chip cookies come from a small bakery near our in-laws’ house – they are large-ish, thick and chewy. They use mini chocolate chips instead of regular size ones and we had an epiphany the first time we had one of their cookies; so many more chocolate chips in every bite that way! Genius! We had been meaning to try it the next time we made chocolate chip cookies, and this was our test batch. Absolutely reliable. Of course, you can totally use regular chocolate chips, but if you have minis on hand, give them a try!
These soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies were a rousing success at our house and at Sunday dinner, and are definitely going on our list of top 3 chocolate chip cookies. We love, love, love Sally’s new book, and if you love cookies, you will too. You can pre-order it on Amazon, and it will be for sale a week from today. We absolutely, positively cannot wait to make the Rainbow Kiss Cookies for Christmas this year!
If you have a favorite chocolate chip cookie, we would love to know how you make them!
One year ago: Rest Straightforward, Sweet Boy
Four years ago: Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake
Five years ago: Baklava
Soft & Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Yield: 24 to 30 cookies One special ingredient and a few straightforward tweaks make these the softest chocolate chip cookies you'll ever eat!- 2¼ cups (281.25 g) all-purpose flour
- 1½ teaspoons (1.5 teaspoons) cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon (0.5 teaspoon) salt
- ¾ cup (170.25 g) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
- ¾ cup (165 g) packed light brown sugar
- ½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar
- 1 egg, at room temperature
- 1 egg yolk, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1⅓ cups (240 g) miniature semisweet chocolate chips
- Whisk the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together until combined and no brown sugar lumps remain. Whisk in the egg and egg yolk, then whisk in the vanilla extract until combined.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon until the cookie dough comes together. Stir in the chocolate chips. The dough will be soft and even a little wet. Cover and chill the dough in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours (and up to 4 days). If chilling for longer than 3 hours, allow it to sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before rolling and baking the dough will be quite hard.
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.
- Roll balls of dough, 2 scant tablespoons of dough per cookie, and place 3 inches (7.5 cm) apart on the baking sheets. Bake for 12 to 13 minutes, or until lightly browned on the sides. The center will look soft.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Cookies will stay fresh in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
- The original recipe called for regular semisweet chocolate chips, but we substituted mini chocolate chips. Either would be rich!
- We used a medium cookie scoop for portioning out the dough, which is approximately 2 tablespoons, so these might be just a teeny tiny smidge larger than the scant 2 tablespoons called for in the recipe.
- Yield: 24 to 30 cookies
- Prep: 15 minutes
- Cook: 35 minutes
- Total: 2 hours 50 minutes
Ingredients
- 2¼ cups ( 281.25 g ) all-purpose flour
- 1½ teaspoons ( 1.5 teaspoons ) cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon ( 0.5 teaspoon ) salt
- ¾ cup ( 170.25 g ) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
- ¾ cup ( 165 g ) packed light brown sugar
- ½ cup ( 100 g ) granulated sugar
- 1 egg, at room temperature
- 1 egg yolk, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1⅓ cups ( 240 g ) miniature semisweet chocolate chips
Method
- Whisk the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, whisk the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together until combined and no brown sugar lumps remain. Whisk in the egg and egg yolk, then whisk in the vanilla extract until combined.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon until the cookie dough comes together. Stir in the chocolate chips. The dough will be soft and even a little wet. Cover and chill the dough in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours (and up to 4 days). If chilling for longer than 3 hours, allow it to sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before rolling and baking the dough will be quite hard.
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.
- Roll balls of dough, 2 scant tablespoons of dough per cookie, and place 3 inches (7.5 cm) apart on the baking sheets. Bake for 12 to 13 minutes, or until lightly browned on the sides. The center will look soft.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Cookies will stay fresh in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
The original recipe called for regular semisweet chocolate chips, but we substituted mini chocolate chips. Either would be rich!
We used a medium cookie scoop for portioning out the dough, which is approximately 2 tablespoons, so these might be just a teeny tiny smidge larger than the scant 2 tablespoons called for in the recipe.
