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These Perfect Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies are thick and moist, great for dunking in a tall glass of milk. Find out how to make your perfect chocolate chip cookie here as we explore what the ingredients do for your cookie!
I don’t know about you, but I have always been on the hunt for the most perfect chocolate chip cookie. As I searched for recipes and studied up on what ingredients to use for the best results, something became clear. I had to decide what MY perfect homemade chocolate chip cookie would look like. Was it thick and fluffy or thin and chewy? Was it moist or cakey? I knew in my mind what I wanted, something thick and fluffy, buttery and sweet… something that you wouldn’t forget. I just knew that there was THE COOKIE… the one… my soul mate cookie for life… And by George, I think I’ve discovered it!
Quest for the Perfect Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookie
It took many trials of baking cookies, varying ingredients, and of course taste testing! After reaching my ultimate sugar high, which was pretty hilarious in the moment, I felt that I had not only found the PERFECT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE, but also discovered some interesting things about ingredients and what they do when you bake them up together. I thought I’d not only share a few recipes to help you achieve what you are going for, but also go over what you can add or delete as ingredients to achieve what you’re after in a cookie!
The picture above shows the results from trial one. I went with a standard chocolate chip cookie recipe first. The cookie to the left and in the center were made with a combination of shortening and butter (just different temperatures). For the sake of trying to achieve a thicker cookie, I varied the recipe by using all butter (instead of using shortening) and I used walnuts. As you can clearly see, the standard recipe will lead you to a great thin and chewy cookie that not only looks great but tastes amazing. The all-butter cookie with walnuts and chocolate chips was much thicker and also moist and chewy. If you were wanting to avoid shortening, this is a great alternative. Here’s the standard Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe I used to achieve the thin and chewy version:
INGREDIENTS
1/2 Cup (1 stick) Unsalted Butter, at room temperature (I also use salted butter)
1/2 Cup Vegetable Shortening (like Crisco)
1/2 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Light Brown Sugar
2 Eggs, at room temperature
1 Teaspoon Vanilla
2 1/4 Cup All-Purpose Flour (I used Gold Metal All-Purpose Flour)
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1 Teaspoon Salt
2 Cups Chocolate Chips or Chopped Semi-Sweet Chocolate (I used Nestle Chocolate Morsals)
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the shortening and butter until smooth (use a hand mixer or stand mixer). Add the sugars and continue mixing until smooth. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix.
In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt. Using a wooden spoon, turn the flour mixture into the butter mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips until combined.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Drop 1/4 cup spoonfulls of the dough onto the cookie sheet, only placing 6 cookies at a time on the pan. Bake for 10-15 minutes, watching the cookies until they just start to brown. When you see them turn golden brown around the edges, they are ready to take out of the oven. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes and then transfer to a plate or wire rack.
You can freeze this dough in balls so they are ready to take out anytime to bake! This recipe makes about 20 cookies.
Round 2
What you see above is round two in the cookie trials. Because I was on on the tall and thick cookie quest, I decided to start experimenting with different flours to see what made a difference. All of the cookies above were made with Cake Flour. I had to specify to my mom that Cake Flour is not Cake Mix. I’m sure many people might think this when they hear “Cake Flour,” but Cake Flour actually comes in a box near the regular flour. For this trial, I used Swanson Cake Flour, which comes in a bright red box. The cookie to the left was made with just a cup of cake flour (obviously not enough) and the one to the right was made with a combination of cake flour and oat flour. You can make oat flour by buying hard oats and putting some in a Vitamex blender or whatever kind of high speed chopper blender you have, and blending until it turns to flour. You can substitute half the oat flour for the cake flour or regular flour. The oat flour will give the cookies an oat taste (almost like oatmeal).
When I researched how to get the cookies puffy, one of the things to try was baking powder, so this trial also included the baking powder. The best results from this trial included the cookies made with cake flour and baking powder. These are the cookies in the middle in the picture up above. The ones to the left came out very flat and buttery. Those had baking powder in them, but they only had half the cake flour. The ones to the right had the cake flour and oat flour and baking powder. They came out fluffy as well, but I didn’t prefer them because I wanted a standard chocolate chip cookie, and these had a strong oat flavor.
Here’s the recipe to achieve the perfect homemade chocolate chip cookie:
INGREDIENTS
1/2 Cup Butter, Softened (I used Plugra brand in the salted, you can also use unsalted)
3/4 Cup Dark Brown Sugar
1 Egg
1 Teaspoon Vanilla (can add another teaspoon if you like vanilla)
1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 1/2 Cups Cake Flour + a 1/2 cup to add as needed (I used Swanson Cake Flour)
1 Cup Chocolate Chips (I used Guittard semi-sweet chocolate chips)
1/2 Cup Chopped Walnuts (if you like)
DIRECTIONS
Heat oven to 375 degrees.
In a mixing bowl, cream the butter first with a mixer. Then add the brown sugar and mix together. Beat in the vanilla, egg, baking soda, baking powder and salt until combined.
This part is really important, use a spoon or spatula to add in the cake flour and add one cup first and blend with the spoon until you start to see the dough become like a thick cookie dough. It will probably still be very moist and sticky. Add 1/2 cup and keep turning with spatula. Use the final 1/2 cup dough only as needed and turn over dough with spatula until it starts to hold together as a ball of dough. It should pull away from the bowl and become thick. Add the chocolate chips in by mixing in with the spoon. Add walnuts if you prefer.
Spoon the dough in 1/4 cup amounts onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake only 6 cookies at a time. Bake in the 375 degree oven for 10-15 minutes and check at the 10 minute mark. Remove from the oven when the edges start to brown.
You can also save this dough by forming it into balls and freezing in a ziplock container. Anytime you want a few cookies, just take them out of the freezer and bake them up. I noticed that the frozen cookies just took a minute or two longer to bake. Some bakers claim that if you refrigerate or freeze the dough that it will help them bake up tall, but this didn’t matter in my trials. It had more to do with the ingredients, especially the amount of flour and type of flour.
Round 3
Just for the sake of trying to make the tall cookies with all-purpose flour, I performed one more trial of baking. The cookie to the left was made with cake flour and oat flour but I added walnuts. I wondered if the nuts would help the cookie stay thick, and in this case, it didn’t. The cookies to the right and middle were made with all-purpose flour and they had baking powder in them. These also rose and made nice thick cookies. They were made with the thick cookie recipe above. I will say that the cookies made with the all-purpose flour had a more floury taste to them. I preferred the cake flour only because it blended well with the other ingredients and didn’t overpower the other ingredients. This is something that you learn as you bake more… you want your creations to have an overall wonderful taste… you don’t want specific ingredients to overpower or stand out from the crowd of the other ingredients. In this case, you want to taste the whole chocolate chip cookie and enjoy it as an entire cookie rather than tasting the flour separately, you see… 🙂
Chocolate Chip Cookie Science!
During the cookie trials, I couldn’t help but think how testing out different ingredients to create the cookie of your dreams would make a great science fair project! Many bakers made claims that certain ingredients would cause the cookie to rise, and after I performed these trials, I can safely claim that many of them are WRONG! I won’t say who, but some claimed that baking powder would make the cookie rise, and for some of the cookies I made with baking powder, that just didn’t happen. Also, another baker claimed that the oat flour would make a cookie more thick, and while the cookie rose a little, it didn’t puff up. I will list the ingredients here so you can see how they all play a part, and then I would encourage you to play with the recipes above and create the cookie of your dreams with the information provided here!
Flour: if you want a standard, thin, chewy, crispy edged cookie, you can use all-purpose flour. If you are wanting a more chewy cookie, then substitute some bread flour. Bread flour has more protein and gluten which will cause the cookie to be more compact. If you want a fluffy, puffy cookie, then use cake flour. If you are looking for a cookie with more texture, then try a combo of the all-purpose flour and oat flour. You can also use bread flour and oat flour.
Baking Soda: Baking Soda is supposed to cause the cookies to brown, so I would keep baking soda in the recipe.
Baking Powder: If you want the thin, chewy cookie, don’t add baking powder. Baking powder increases acidity in the recipe and will cause the ingredients to quickly coagulate. Baking powder should assist with making the cookies rise and puff up.
Salt: Only adds flavor. Do not take out salt. It helps the caramel flavor pop (which is created with the butter and brown sugar melting together during the baking process).
Butter/Shortening: You want to buy a good quality butter. I opt for the European butters, like Kerrygold or Plugra. And you can let the butter sit out for an hour or two to get it to room temperature. You also want to try to cream the butter first by mixing it until it becomes light and fluffy. Butter will melt at a lower temperature than shortening, however, I was able to create fluffy, thick cookies with all butter. Generally, the butter or shortening will melt and cause the cookie to spread, so the other ingredients play a part here.
Sugar: White sugar increases the spread of the cookie because it liquefies at high temperature. Recipes that contain granulated sugar will produce a crisper cookie because it tends to take up water. It also raises the temperature at which proteins coagulate which will delay the setting of the cookie. Brown sugar can be used if you want a moist, chewy cookie because it absorbs water from the air (always bringing moisture to the cookie). Honey, molasses and corn syrup do the same things.
Vanilla: Only for flavor. Add a teaspoon if you really like the flavor of vanilla.
Eggs: Add richness and puffiness to cookies, so add eggs if you want a taller cookie. If you are looking for the thin, crisper cookie, then only use one egg or only the egg white. Extra egg yolk will add richness and fat. Eggs have superb binding and coagulation ability which helps with setting. They provide some of the water that helps the cookie rise due to steam. Egg whites will cause the cookie to dry out producing a more light and airy texture.
The Add-Ins: the chocolate chip brand will make a huge difference in taste. If you’re going for a standard chocolate chip cookie, the Nestle Toll House Morsals work fine. If you want to upgrade your cookie, try a richer morsal or chip like the Guittard semi-sweet chocolate chips. You can also add butterscotch chips and white chocolate chips for different flavors. Nuts are always a great addition and you can toast pecans or walnuts before adding them to your recipe to give them an even richer flavor. Other things to try are cinnamon, raisins, cocoa powder (to make the entire cookie chocolate), dried cranberries, toasted coconut, peanut butter, cayenne, and dark chocolate. This is where you can get really creative and make the cookie the cookie of your dreams!!!
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Happy Baking!
Mandy Gatlin XOXO