The best chocolate chip cookie recipe

Learn how to make the best chocolate chip cookies with chunks of dark chocolate with this easy recipe. This makes a small batch of big chocolate chip cookies that are thick and chewy.

Jacques Torres' chocolate chip cookie recipe published in a 2008 in the New York Times is ever-popular. The recipe seems pretty standard, just like most other chocolate chip cookie recipes, a simple list of ingredients and nothing different from most other recipes. And yet, when you start to analyze it, you'll see there's actually more to it. 

What chocolate chip cookies are made of

If you want to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch, you will need the following ingredients:

• butter, preferably unsalted butter because you will add salt to the dough, but if you have salted, it will work. Just adjust the salt in the recipe accordingly, otherwise your cookies may be too salty
• granulated sugar gives these cookies crispy edges
• brown sugar adds molasses flavour to help balance the eggy-flavour. Brown sugar may also lead to a slightly thicker cookie. I prefer dark brown sugar, which has a higher molasses content and more flavour, but light also works here
• large eggs, don't use smaller eggs because your cookie dough may be too dry and your cookies won't spread enough, but don't use extra large eggs because they could cause the cookie dough to puff too much as it bakes, leading to a more cake-y cookie
• all-purpose flour is needed to bind all the ingredients together and give the cookies structure, contributing to the chewiness of the cookies as well. If you don't use enough flour, your cookies may spread too much as they bake
• baking soda is a base (alkaline). You need baking soda for the cookies to spread properly and for fast browning. Do not use baking powder. Read up on baking soda vs baking powder if you are unsure
• salt is really important to balance out the sweet molasses flavour. Don't skip it. I like to use Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt, but table salt will work, though the cookies will be saltier and you may want to halve the salt in that case
• chocolate chips or chunks are essential in this recipe, and use the best you can buy. I prefer dark chocolate with over 50 % cocoa content, but feel free to use what you like!

To this list, you can add nuts or dried fruit to further customize the recipe to make your favourite cookie with exactly what you want!

The type of flour

One thing that sets the Jacques Torres recipe apart from the rest is that it combines bread flour and cake flour to make the dough, instead of just using all-purpose flour. And though all-purpose flour would be a descent baking substitution for the combination of flours, protein-wise, in terms of starches, it doesn't match up:

• cake flour is higher in starch and lower in protein, and it's a very fine, soft flour, that would add a lighter, cakey texture to cookies
• bread flour is lower in starch but higher in protein, and has a great capacity for absorbing water that is prone to gluten development . By combining the two flours, you can see how they each bring different properties that all-purpose can't.
• all-purpose flour is in between cake and bread flours on the protein scale, at 10–11% protein. It's lower in starch than cake flour.

Most of us tend to store all-purpose flour in our pantries, so use that, but know that you can also try 50/50 mix of bread and cake flour and compare the results, or try alternative flourss. I used all-purpose to develop my big fat chewy chocolate chip cookies, but I also tested spelt flour for spelt chocolate chip cookies, or even rye. Depending on the flour you use, you may have to add more to avoid spreading.

Chilling the dough

There's another point in the recipe technique that sets the Jacques Torres chocolate chip cookie recipe apart: chilling the cookie dough for 24–72 hours for the dough prior to baking. This means the recipe takes planning. If you want cookies now, sure this technically would work, but the results won't be the same.

Resting the dough transforms a good old chocolate chip cookie dough into the perfect cookie: crispy, chewy, sweet, salty, chocolaty. The texture of the rested dough is completely different from that of a freshly prepared batch. It's definitely worth the wait. I find it easier to portion out the dough before resting, personally. Better yet, always have a batch of the rested dough on hand, pre-scooped and frozen. 

Then all you have to do is place the scoops on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake them, when the craving strikes. The baking time varies depending on if your dough is chilled or frozen. Sometimes I prefer letting the dough warm up slightly at room temperature (while the oven preheats) so that the cookies can spread a little as they bake before setting. This way your cookies aren't so squat.

The chocolate: chocolate chips vs grated chocolate

For this recipe, I tested two types of chocolate: whole chocolate chips versus dark chocolate that was grated into shards in the food processor. The cookies were made from the same batch, split in half prior to adding the chocolate:

• to half the dough, I added dark chocolate chips
• to the other half, the same amount of dark chocolate chips that I had ground up in the food processor

The ground dark chocolate render the cookie slightly less sweet. I think I might have preferred these to the chocolate chips, especially that 70 % dark chocolate is much less sweet than chocolate chips.

If you grind up chocolate in the food processor to make coarse shards of chocolate, and add that to your cookie dough instead of chocolate chips, you can make the ultimate chocolate chip cookies. Grated chocolate might be the best kept secret to making the best cookies!