Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe (Old Fashioned) (2024)

FAQs

What is the trick to making soft and chewy cookies? ›

It's not the egg, all-purpose flour, or even the vanilla extract. The simple, yet oh-so-necessary component is cornstarch. That's right, the flavorless thickening agent used for soups, stews, and curries is also the secret weapon for baked goods that boast a silky-smooth mouthfeel.

Putting a slice of fresh white bread in the container with the cookies will help the cookies stay soft: fresh bread is moist, and that slice will give up its moisture for the greater good: keeping the cookies from drying out. We recommend white bread so that no flavor is transferred to the cookies.

Baking powder is likely your best bet if you are in the mood for a light, fluffy cookie. However, when the craving hits for something chewier and denser, like chocolate chip cookies, reach for that box of baking soda to create your perfect batch.

Use Melted Butter

If the goal is a chewy cookie, then you absolutely need to be using melted butter. The technique of creaming softened butter and sugar together is often used for making cakes. And for good reason! The process of creaming incorporates air into the butter which results in a more airy and cakey cookie.

The ingredients you use and how you shape your cookies both play an important role in whether your cookies turn out crispy or chewy. The type of flour and sugar you use, if your cookie dough contains eggs, and whether you use melted or softened butter all factor into the crispy-chewy equation, too.

Brown sugar, meanwhile, is dense and compacts easily, creating fewer air pockets during creaming—that means that there's less opportunity to entrap gas, creating cookies that rise less and spread more. With less moisture escaping via steam, they also stay moist and chewy.

Melted butter is best suited for drop doughs such as chocolate chip, peanut butter, and sugar cookies, as well as most cookie bars. You can usually adapt recipes that don't originally call for melted butter to use this technique if you're looking for an even fudgier texture.

Just before the dough goes in the oven, I take each ball of dough, and flatten it slightly. I then press chunks of chopped chocolate onto the top. You can add some of the chocolate dust from chopping too. Then I squeeze it back into a ball, and place it on the baking sheet.

For cookies that are high in butter content, this step is crucial and prevents them from melting into thin disks while baking. For most cookie recipes, it takes at least two hours in the fridge to fully chill the dough; an annoyingly long time when you're in the mood to eat cookies ASAP.

What is the trick to soften hard cookies? ›

The easiest way to soften cookies with bread is to place the cookies in an airtight container with a slice of bread and leave them for a few hours. The bread will release moisture and help to rehydrate the cookies, making them soft and chewy once again.

Cornstarch helps product soft and thick cookies. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. An extra egg yolk increases chewiness. Rolling the cookie dough balls to be tall and lumpy instead of wide and smooth gives the cookies a bakery-style textured thickness.

This simplest kitchen hack you'll ever love!

If you bake too many cookies (as if there is such a thing!) and are concerned about them going stale, just add a slice of white bread to the storage container to keep them from hardening.

Different types of sugars affect the texture because they absorb different amounts of water. Remember moisture is the key! White sugar creates crispier cookies and brown sugar creates chewier cookies.