Tips for Making Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

You don’t have to be a professional baker to make fluffy, chewy, perfect chocolate chip cookies. Follow these tips and your cookies will come out flawless every time.

Chocolate chips cookies are a universally-loved dessert, right? If you’re out of baking ideas- or if you just don’t like to be in the kitchen- you can never go wrong with chocolate chip cookies.

Then why are they so hard to make? They must be because people continue to be satisfied with store-bought logs of dough or place-and-bake imitations. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed both of those varieties on more than one occasion. I’m not known to turn down a chocolate chip cookie, no matter its origins.

But the thing is, people think those cookies are as good. Like as-good-as-homemade good, even though they’re far from it. And I’m convinced that cookie lovers everywhere would reject those pre-made impostors and make their cookies from scratch if only they realized how easy it is.

It is. Easy, that is. So easy. Can I tell you a secret? My homemade chocolate chip cookies are ah-mazing, but I don’t have a special recipe. I just follow the instructions on the bag of chocolate chips- whichever brand I happen to be using- and make a few special adjustments. The result is perfect chocolate chip cookies. Every time.

Tips for Making Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

Use room temperature butter

It’s a rare thing for me to plan to make cookies in advance, which means I usually don’t have to set butter out to soften. Instead, I microwave sticks- straight from the fridge and still in the wrapper- for eight seconds at a time, turning them in between, until they’re soft. No more starting with melted butter.

Cream the butter and sugar

I know it’s in the instructions, bu I used to dump all the ingredients in the bowl and mix. My cookies tasted great, but the texture wasn’t as soft as it could be. One day, on a whim, I decided to cream the sugars with butter. The resulting cookies were fluffy and chewy without the slightest bit of graininess.

Add extra flour

If you’re cookies tend to bake out flat, add more flour. I add a quarter cup of flour to every batch I make (so if I’m tripling the batch, I add three quarters of a cup). The extra flour will get rid of the pancake effect and give you cookies with body.

Don’t overcook them

Do not put your cookies in the oven, set the timer for the instructed time, and walk away. More often than not, they don’t to bake for the full amount of time listed on the bag. Set the timer for a few minutes less than that and check on them. You know they’re done when they just lose their shininess and you begin to see golden brown around the edges.

Freeze the dough

If you resort to refrigerated dough when you’re short on time, I’ve got a solution for you. Make a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough as you normally would, but instead of baking it, roll the dough into small balls and place them on a baking sheet, close together but not touching. Cover the sheet and freeze for a couple hours. When the dough is frozen, transfer the balls to a freezer-safe ziploc bag.

Bam! Now you can have fresh chocolate chip cookies any time. They’ll take a few extra minutes in the oven, but it’s a small price to pay for having fresh-baked homemade cookies.

What are your favorite tips for making perfect chocolate chip cookies?

Put these tips into practice by making monster cookies or salted peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.