Look no further, these are the best chocolate chip cookies! Made with brown butter and two types of chocolate, these little cookies are nutty, soft, chewy and warm, all at once! They’ll definitely be your go-to chocolate chip cookie after you try them.
Chocolate chip cookies are an American classic. Frankly, I never liked them. Growing up, I would make chocolateless chip cookies because the elements of chocolate chip cookies were appealing to me, but the chocolate never was. Nevertheless I’ve been determined to make the perfect easy chocolate chip cookie recipe for years now.
Folks, I can proudly say, it has been accomplished. This chocolate chip cookie recipe is Karis-approved, which, judging my history of chocolateless chip cookies, is saying a lot!
In this easy chocolate chip cookie recipe, we start by browning the butter for a richer, more complex flavor. We use multiple egg yolks to also increase richness and chewiness. To finish it off we’re using two types of semi-sweet chocolate–chocolate chips and a chopped bar of chocolate, to make sure the chocolate oozes throughout the cookies!
How to Brown Butter
Browned Butter is this delicious version of butter that makes it even more delicious than regular butter! It involves melting down the butter until the milk solids in the butter get toasted and brown. The toasted milk solids are what enhance the flavor of the butter, ultimately deepening the flavor of the chocolate chip cookies.
Cut butter into pieces-before adding butter to medium heat, cut it and let it sit out of the refrigerator for about 10 minutes. Cutting the butter will help make sure the heat distributes evenly and letting it sit out will help it not to heat too fast.
Keep it constantly moving-Keep the butter moving with a spatula or whisk the entire time it is over the heat. Don’t try to multitask during this, you want to be there with eyes on it the whole time. The butter will melt down, then foam up, then the milk solids will fall to the bottom of the pan and get toasted. P.s-it will smell INCREDIBLE.
Use a lighter saucepan-If you have a light-bottomed pan use it to heat the butter so that you are able to better see when it has browned. Be careful here, it can go from perfectly browned to burnt very quickly!
Include all the brown bits!-Don’t leave the brown bits in the pan, this is what brings that bold flavor! When transferring the browned butter to a medium bowl, use a spatula to scrape out every last bit of butter and brown bits.
Best Practices for the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Add a bit of butter back to the hot browned butter after it’s been taken off the heat. When butter is browned, you lose some of the overall volume of the butter because it evaporates. In order to make up for the lost butter, we immediately add ½ Tbsp of cold butter to the brown butter. Stir until it melts.
- Allow the brown butter to cool slightly before adding the other ingredients to it. So much of baking is about temperature. Adding eggs to a piping hot butter and sugar mixture could risk curdling the eggs. Wait 5 minutes or so before adding your other ingredients.
- Do not overmix the chocolate chip cookie dough. Beating the batter too much will change the texture of the cookie, making it more fluffy and cake-like than chewy.
- Get good quality ingredients for your chocolate chip cookies. This is not a recipe to skimp out and get the cheapest ingredients. The flavor will be greatly impacted by a good quality butter and good quality chocolates.
- Slightly underbake the cookie to get the perfect chocolate chip cookie that will be soft in the middle and ever so slightly crunchy on the outside. When you pull your cookies out of the oven, they finish baking when you let them sit on the hot pan. This is the secret to a perfectly baked cookie!
A Note on Chocolate
This is the best chocolate chip cookie recipe for a reason, we use two types of chocolate! Use ½ cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips and ½ cup of your favorite semi-sweet chocolate bar roughly chopped.
Enjoy this one friends, it was made with love!
Happy Chocolatey Baking!
Can baking be therapeutic?
I often talk about baking being a therapeutic hobby but I’d like to share more about why I feel that way as well as how it can become a relaxing hobby for you!
When I bake, it’s my creative time. I may put on my favorite nostalgic movie or tv show in the background, or a Spotify playlist titled “French café” and leave my troubles behind.
Sometimes I pour myself a glass of wine and light a candle. Then, with the mood set, the mixing of batter, kneading of dough and smoothing of icing is my only care in the world.
When I say baking is therapeutic, sometimes people respond saying “not for me it isn’t!” I completely understand why someone might feel that way. There have been plenty of times where I spend hours on something only for it to fail or something breaks that shouldn’t or I forget to clean as I go and am left with a disastrous kitchen to clean.
So I should in reality, have a caveat to my “baking as therapy” claims…
Baking is therapy when you curate the experience to be relaxing.
How do you curate that relaxing experience for yourself, you ask?
How to make baking therapeutic…
- Prepare your mind–know that it’s okay if the cake doesn’t rise, or the butter wasn’t chilled enough. Shift your mindset from seeing your failures as mistakes to seeing them as opportunities for learning.
- Prepare your space–I cannot and will not bake on top of a messy kitchen. If I were to do this I would be starting from a place of stress! Take an extra 10 minutes to clean any dishes in the sink and wipe down the counters, this small effort will pay you back greatly in brain space and clarity.
- Clean as you go! I’ll tell you the one way to make baking stressful and tiresome, is to not clean as you go! After I use each ingredient that I no longer need, I put it away.
After each major step in the process, I wipe down the counters and put dishes that are no longer needed in the sink. If there is chill time or baking time I don’t sit, I do the cleaning then. Make this shift and you’ll really notice the difference!
By the way, this last tip really helped me when I was on The Great American Baking Show–and the crew that cleaned up behind us made a point to tell me that my workspace was always so clean they didn’t have much to do!
I would reply by saying “it’s how I stay sane in this tent!”
Additional suggestions:
*Maybe try printing off the recipe instead of looking at it on your phone, tablet or laptop and use this time to unplug from technology for a few hours
**Invite friends or family over to share your creation with you. Time spent with loved ones over food is a universally special experience
And that’s how I discovered baking for my mental health. If you try any of these suggestions, let me know how it went for you! I’m really invested in spreading this message to others in hopes that baking will enhance your lives more than it already does!
Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
For the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
- 3/4 cups (1 1/2 sticks) (170g) unsalted butter cubed, cold + 1/2 Tbsp (8g) cold butter to add after browning
- 1 cup (200g) light brown sugar
- 2 Tbsp (30g) granulated sugar
- 1 (55g) large egg room temperature
- 2 (30g) large egg yolks room temperature
- 2 tsp vanilla bean paste* or vanilla extract
- 2 cups (250g) all purpose flour
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt + more for sprinkling
- 1 cup (170g) semisweet chocolate 1/2 cup chocolate chips, 1/2 cup roughly chopped chocolate bar
Instructions
For the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Cut the ¾ cups (170g) of unsalted butter into 1 Tbsp cubes and place the cubes in a saucepan. Turn the heat to medium/high and brown the butter.
- Remove the butter from the heat and pour into a medium bowl. Don’t forget to get all of the brown bits out of the saucepan!
- Add ½ Tbsp (8g) of cold butter to help make up for some of the volume lost while browning the butter. Stir in the cold butter until it melts. Allow the butter to cool slightly.
- While the butter is cooling, measure out 2 cups (250g) of all purpose flour, ¾ tsp of baking soda and 1 tsp sea salt into a separate bowl and whisk together.
- Then add 1 cup (200g) of light brown sugar and 2 tbsp (30g) of granulated sugar to the slightly cooled butter and beat by hand with a whisk until combined.
- Add in 1 large egg (55g), 2 large egg yolks (30g) and 2 tsp of vanilla bean paste* and beat again by hand until combined.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix with a spatula until combined.
- Measure out 1 cup of semi sweet chocolate** add it to the batter and mix until fully incorporated.
- Use a 2” cookie scoop to scoop out the cookie dough onto a tray. You can place the cookies close together since you will need to refrigerate them before baking. The batter should yield a baker's dozen (plus maybe 1 or 2 more!)
- Refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour. Towards the end of the hour preheat the oven to 350 ℉ (180 ℃).
- Bake cookies for 11-13 minutes depending on your preferences***
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes on the tray. Sprinkle a bit of flaky salt on top. Then remove to a cooling rack, allow to finish cooling and enjoy!!
[…] regular chocolate chip cookie recipe uses brown butter, and vanilla bean paste to create the most perfect cookie with depth of flavor. […]