Best, Easy Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies - Chewy and Soft Cookies, Quick and Simple Recipe
This is a quick and easy recipe for the best homemade chocolate chip cookies ever. They are soft and chewy, and so simple to make any time of the year - during fall, for Christmas, or just any time you feel like baking!
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The recipe I’m sharing today is the best chocolate chip cookie recipe I’ve tried to bake. This is the first time I’m actually happy with the result of my cookie-baking endeavours. I’ve tried many homemade, from-scratch chocolate chip cookie recipes, and I’ve never really been happy with the texture of them. I blamed my oven for the longest time, because why take responsibility for failure? 🤭
But I brushed up on my cookie science, googled a ton of questions, made a few tweaks to recipes I came across, and finally - I have THIS recipe that WORKS. And it works WELL.
These cookies are soft, chewy, not sickly-sweet, and just DELICIOUS. They’re also very easy to crisp up on the outside if that’s what you prefer!
What’s more - these cookies are so quick and simple to make. This recipe is GREAT for beginners, and that’s coming from a cookie novice like myself. I’m used to baking cupcakes, and I’m so amazed by how much quicker it is to bake cookies. These ones just take 10 mins tops in the oven and they’re ready. Do you know how incredible that is for someone who is used to waiting for 30-40 minutes for cakes and cupcakes to finish baking?
Anyway, I could rave about these cookies forever so I’m going to stop myself here and get into my baking tips for these easy, homemade, soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies.
Baking Tips & Tricks for the Best Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies:
Sieve the dry ingredients: One of the times I baked this recipe - the cookies looked a little funny. They still tasted okay - maybe a little crumbly - but I definitely noticed a difference. I racked my brain wondering what I did differently and realized this was the first time I didn’t sieve the flour. So my advice to give these cookies the best chance of perfection, is to sieve the dry ingredients before you add them to the mixing bowl.
Break-down brown sugar clumps: I always realise this only once I’m already whipping the butter and sugars together. I realise when the clumps go through the electric whisk and somehow stay clumps. Then I start going through the mixture with a fork trying to break down all the clumps of brown sugar. So the best way to work around this issue is to measure out the brown sugar and smoothen it out with a fork in a separate bowl, before adding it to the butter.
Butter softened at room temperature: I’m not sure why but microwaving butter to soften it tends to mess up the consistency of the cookie dough. This is why I’ve noticed that the best way to go about this recipe is to let the butter sit out for a half hour or more so it can soften naturally at room temperature. I have always got the best textured cookies this way. Just keep the butter out in advance the day you plan to bake these.
Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl: We start out this recipe by combining our dry ingredients - flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt - in a separate bowl and setting it aside. Make sure not to do this in your main mixing bowl. We use the main mixing bowl for the second step which is creaming together the butter and sugars. Then, the dry ingredients we set aside get added to this main mixing bowl later. It’s always an unnecessary hassle whenever I forget this step and have to transfer it all to different bowl.
For crispier cookies: increase the oven temperature to 190 degrees Celsius (375 Fahrenheit). This recipe for soft and chewy cookies requires your oven to be preheated to 180 degrees Celsius (355 Fahrenheit). BUT, I have tried to bake them at 190 C and the outer shell of the cookies gets super crisp, while the inside stays gooey and soft! So if you like that, feel free to try that out. You may need to take them out just a couple of minutes earlier though.
Try chocolate chunks: For more gourmet-looking and unique-tasting cookies that stand out in people’s memory, try replacing the standard chocolate chips with chopped up pieces of your favourite chocolate bar! I did this a couple of times and it takes the cookies to a whole other level. You won’t regret it. You even have regular chocolate chips mixed in the dough as usual, but add a bigger piece of your favourite chocolate bar just in the centre of each ball of cookie dough! Oof, I’m salivating! 🤤
For cookies that spread well: If you usually have trouble with cookies that don’t spread well, flatten the balls of cookie dough out a little before they go in the oven. You could also experiment with replacing SOME of the white sugar with extra brown sugar. Brown sugar has molasses which add moisture to the cookies, thereby helping them spread. So try to tweak a few things and see for yourself! Make this recipe PERFECT as per YOUR preference with tiny changes every time you bake.
One test cookie: When using a new recipe for the first time, I recommend trying to bake a single test cookie. This ensures that all your effort doesn’t go to waste! Imagine baking all your cookies having no idea how they’re going to turn out and then realising that they weren’t right. No one deserves that. 🥺 So do yourself a favour and try out one test cookie so you can adjust the temperature or duration of baking for the rest of them. The 10 extra minutes is worth the perfect batch of cookies, I promise!
DO NOT OVER BAKE: Not just that - DO UNDER-bake. I know. I refused to do this too. It just sounds like bad advice. But I promise it’s not. Cookies bake and harden more as they cool once you take them out of the oven. This means that whatever texture you take them out at - they’re going to harden quite a bit over the next few minutes. So unless you want to break a tooth - do not overbake them, UNDER bake them! They will still look a LITTLE doughy, but in a few minutes of sitting out and cooling, they will cook further. This is why you need a test cookie. To see how long they need inside your oven because every oven is a little different!
Easy, Quick and Simple Recipe for the Best Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies From Scratch:
Yield: 12-14 cookies
Ingredients:
All-Purpose Flour (Sieved/Sifted): 1 and 1/2 Cups
Baking Soda: 1/2 Teaspoon
Baking Powder: 1/4 Teaspoon
Himalayan Pink Salt: 1/2 Teaspoon
Softened Salted Butter: 113 Grams - which is equal to 1/2 Cup
White Granulated Sugar: 1/2 Cup
Light Brown Sugar: 1/2 Cup
1 Egg
Vanilla Essence: 1 Teaspoon
Chocolate Chips - As per your preference
My Favourite Baking Equipment to Bake The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies:
2. Black and Decker Electric Hand Mixer:
Method:
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius (355 Fahrenheit).
Take a separate bowl (not your main mixing bowl) and combine the following dry ingredients: sieved all-purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix these together with a fork or whisk until well combined. Set this bowl aside.
Now, in your main mixing bowl, add softened butter, white sugar and brown sugar. Mix these together until light and creamy.
Add 1 egg to this butter and sugar mixture, and mix well. Then, add vanilla essence and mix again.
Now, slowly add in the dry ingredients from step 2 to this creamy mixture. You can add the dry ingredients in three parts, mixing well between each addition.
Now add as many chocolate chips or chunks as your heart desires! Mix them by folding them into the dough with a spatula.
Line your baking trays with baking paper.
Once the dough is well formed, take 2 tablespoons of cookie dough and roll it into a ball with the palms of your hands. If you would like to add a piece of chocolate to the centre of each cookie, do it now!
Do this with each cookie and place it on the tray with enough space around each ball of dough for the cookies to spread. I usually do 6 cookies on each tray (2 rows of 3 cookies).
Put them in the preheated oven for 8- 10 minutes. Check on them after 8. Don’t over cook them! Let them get a little golden, but bear in mind that cookies continue to cook for a few minutes after they come out of the oven. Read my tips above for more information on this.
Aesthetic Packaging Tips to Deliver Chocolate Chip Cookies:
Recently, I’ve been baking TOO many cookies trying to get this recipe right. This resulted in shipping out tonnes of cookies to my loved ones! I tried a few different ways to send them out, and finally settled on this:
It’s affordable, and way too aesthetically pleasing for the price. This packaging is so cute, rustic and simple. I put the cookies in these affordable glass cookie jars, and then tied some jute string around the necks of the jars 2-3 times. Before tying the jute string into a bow, I added a little “made with love” tag to each jar. That’s it! It’s so simple, and each of these packaging items is so affordable and easy to find. I’m really happy with how they turned out and so was my family. 🤗
Here are some products similar to what I used that I found on Amazon:
That’s all! Enjoy these incredibly delicious soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies! I hope you enjoy following this simple and quick recipe for homemade cookies. And I can’t wait for this to become your go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe like it has quickly become mine. Have a beautiful day with the best comfort food!
Happy Eating!