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Thick Chocolate Chip Cookies! These cookies are nice and golden on the outside and soft and gooey on the inside. Loaded up with tons of melted chocolate. The best part is the size. These cookies are thick and hearty!
My favorite thing about cookies, is possibly the dough. Which means these Texas sized cookies that remain soft and gooey in the center even when baked are my favorite thing ever! These cookies check all the boxes!
- Thick!
- Chewy
- Buttery
- Soft and gooey
- Loaded with chocolate
How do you make thick cookies?
There’s several tricks and tips involved in this recipe that help to create the ultimate thick chocolate chip cookie.
- Use more Brown Sugar: We’re using mostly brown sugar instead of white. The light brown sugar creates a thicker, softer, and chewier cookie than using mostly white sugar.
- Baking Powder: We’re also using baking powder in these cookies instead of baking soda. Baking soda can help create crisper cookies, but we’re going for thick and soft.
- How you handle the dough: After we make the chocolate chip cookie dough, we’re also going to be careful about how we handle it. Don’t squish the dough!
Handle the dough gently
To make the cookies, gently separate the dough into 6 pieces, but don’t form the dough into a ball shape. Most cookie recipes have you compress the dough and form a ball, or form it higher to help with the shape while baking.
But with this dough, we want to loosely form it into a shape, but don’t compress it. We want to keep the dough light and airy.
Important Tips
- The best dough will form if you use a hand mixer or stand mixer. This will allow you to throughly cream the butter and sugars.
- If using a mixer, the dough might seem a bit crumbly. Moist, but not completely sticking together in a solid mound. This is ok. It’s due to the amount of flour in the recipe. This is another thing that makes the cookies so thick. Use your hands to mix the chocolate chips in all the way and you will see the dough come together.
- Again, don’t squish the dough together. Keep it nice and airy. Form it just enough to make the cookie shape.
Can I make these cookies smaller?
This recipe is designed to create LARGE Thick Chocolate Chip Cookies. The best I can describe would be close to Levain Bakery. The recipe is designed to make 6 cookies.
However! This same dough can be used to make smaller size cookies, and they will still puff up thick when baking as long as you follow the instructions. Keep in mind that does change the serving size and nutrition information provided.
Other cookie recipes:
- Brown Butter Toffee Pretzel Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Lemon Cookies
- Banana Split Cookies
- Cowboy Cookies
Thick Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- ½ cup unsalted butter room temperature
- ¾ cup light brown sugar
- ¼ cup white sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¾ cup semi sweet chocolate chips
- ¼ cup chopped pecans can be omitted
Instructions
- Line a large baking sheet with a silicone baking mat, set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl add the butter and sugars. Using a hand or stand mixer cream the butter and sugars together until fluffy.
- Add in the large egg, vanilla and mix until combined.
- Add the flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix until combined. The dough might seem to be in crumbles as mentioned above.
- Pour in the chocolate chips and pecans (if using) and use your hands to mix them in. This will bring the dough together. Be gentle though. We don’t want to compact the dough too much. We want to keep it as airy as possible.
- Divide the dough into 6 pieces. Gently form into cookie form. Place on the baking sheet.
- Chill the cookie dough for at least 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 375 during this time.
- Bake the cookies for about 16-18 minutes. The outside will be golden brown.
- Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for at least 5 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to continue cooling. The cookies need to cool prior to serving. They are best at room temperature.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Recipe initially posted on May 23, 2018. Updated on March 6, 2020 with new images and new video. Only recipe change was a reduction in the amount of vanilla extract. Original photo of recipe below! My chocolate chips melted so much better in that batch!
I need you to truly understand how much you have changed my life with these cookies.
Countless times the recipe on the back of the tollhouse chocolate chip bag has left me yearning for more than a melted out, crunchy chocolate chip cookie.
This recipe produces a crisp crust, a warm gooey center, and I would bet that if I had an oven big enough I’d eat these right into 1,000 pounds and the world’s biggest pair of stretchy pants.
This recipe is getting a 15/10 quarantine score and it’s own personal index card in my arsenal of “I’ve-had-a-long-week-and-I-need-the-next-thing-I-eat-to-hug-me” recipes.
Thank you. Just thank you.
these are GREAT ! i added a cup of shredded coconut, a cup of walnuts , along with the chocolate chips. Used my large scooper, refrigerated all night. baked @375 for 18 minutes- PERFECT ! and the kept their thickness!!! thats what i wanted !
I love when people comment about how much they love the recipe, including all the additions they made to completely overwhelm and change it….
Follow the recipe people. It’s good as is.
So, I’m no professional baker by any stretch of the imagination, but I AM a damn good baker. I make Candied Bacon Chocolate Chip cookies every year for the holidays that friends as presents that turned into dozens upon dozens upon dozens of cookies that they now all ‘tip’ me for.
Although everyone loves them, I was looking for a more “meaty” cookie dough this year to change it up. I just felt the cookie part fell flat in comparison to the flavor the cookie packs.
Holy good grief THIS is the recipe I have been searching for!!!!!
I was a bit perplexed with the consistency (even though I read – multiple times – not to be thrown off by this part) because lets face it, change doesn’t always sit well. Haha.
These cookies are PACKED with flavor and exactly how I like my cookie, with the texture of being undercooked but 100% done. They are moist, chewy, doughy and freaking DELICIOUS!!!!!
THANK YOU Serene!!!
Cookies were delicious! Definitely will make again!
Holy moly! THese are fan-freakin-tastic!! I rarely come across a recipe that I don’t have to doctor, but I followed this recipe to the letter and am in heaven!
Hi! What will happen if I add cornstarch? I don’t live in the US, what is considered all purpose flower?
How can we prevent them from getting hard? After a couple hours they lose all chewiness. Maybe adding an egg?
Anna, I’ve made this recipe maybe 5 times and have never had them get hard. (To be fair, 6 cookies don’t last all that long, but they have lasted a couple days and always retained perfect texture.) Try following the recipe and tips when mixing and forming the dough, and be sure to refrigerate! Should come out perfectly.
I am really, really glad I did not actually follow the recipe (just some of it). I assume the writer lives in a climate where ‘room temperature butter’ begins to lose its stability and form pockets of melting (Texas) however maintain its outer walls. I live in a COLD climate (Manitoba) where room temperature butter keeps its cohesive shape and is merely ‘soft enough to work’. This different in butter softness causes extreme changes in a cookie result, fortunately something I knew to adapt. If you are in such a climate where your butter will now actually accept your finger pressing into it but no pockets will form of melt, use my advice or your dough will be too powdery to form up. Also note that even decreasing flour, these cookies will not ‘flatten out’, so make them the final height you desire them to stay when you bake, not ‘balls’ as you would do with many other recipes.
I doubled the recipe, and put in 2 cups of flour, which was slightly too little, and then added 1 more cup, which was too much, and resulted in a thick floury base that would not absorb into the dough without doing exactly what the recipe chides against doing: overmixing it. So, I lost about a half an inch coating the bottom of the bowl, I figure around a quarter of a cup too much.
Overmixing is a genuine concern the writer is correct to recommend you avoid as it forms strands of gluten, making the cookie tougher and less fluffy. At base proportions this would be 1.5 cups of flour resulting in too much, so I would recommend 1 and a quarter cups of flour if you don’t double the recipe like I did, or 2 and a half cups if you do. Or, microwave your butter so that it’s just beginning to lose some cohesion but still has most of its square shape if you want to get the exact results of what a Texan room temperature would give you. This can usually be achieved by microwaving for 45-60 seconds on a low temperature. I used my natural room temperature butter, which is the correct choice if you want a THICK chocolate chip cookie that will not lose its shape during baking (a fully melted butter cookie with less flour will ‘spread out’, getting the butter to a precise melt is VITAL!). My resultant cookie was large, thick, chewy, and fluffy instead of falling apart at the touch as it would have if I had followed the proportions instead of trusting my knowledge of cooking in my climate. For the record: my dough looked like her final result at 2 cups of flour in the doubled recipe, so, exactly half. As only three ‘liquids’ enter the cookie (butter, egg, vanilla) the only variability is the butter’s softness, the amount of vanilla, or the size of the eggs, yet if I had used the original measurements I would have powder and needed to adapt by adding in a liquid, such as milk or a third egg.
Note that the writer also insists in the comments that you cannot alter the sugar amounts, a lie, baking is not the precious precision art that some would have you believe unless you mean to reproduce for sale. You can get a perfectly fine chocolate chip cookie by altering the sugar, it just won’t be the EXACT vision of this writer’s cookie. I have never found a cookie recipe that couldn’t take a sugar decrease and bake up tastily. Thus, as I always do when I bake, I decreased the brown sugar to 1 cup (half a cup if you don’t double it) and left the white sugar as it was (using half a cup). I also made smaller cookies, MUCH smaller. I made 16 out of half of my dough and put the other half in the fridge to test the flavor melding overnight concept. They are still quite sweet, delicious, and form the style of chocolate chip cookie I wanted… and ring in more like 150 calories per cookie. Whew. They’ll still be quite large and puffy as long as you didn’t melt your butter or under-add flour, you have to balance that flour ratio to match the softness of your butter and get it just to the point where it’s almost ‘too stiff’ that you can’t really roll out cookies, just squeeze a bit in your hand and set them on the pan.
They will appear ‘underbaked’ but trust me, they need that time on the hot pan to cook and cool all at the same time to get to that perfectly chewy centre. The greater proportion of brown sugar to white sugar and large amount of flour is vital to that result, if you do fiddle with the sugar amounts make sure that there’s always more brown sugar because it melts differently. I do like my cookies result and I will do this again, but with my changes. Oh yeah, I added more vanilla (you can always add more vanilla) and a tiny bit more salt, which I felt I could have comfortably doubled and may do in my next version if I use unsalted butter again (decrease if it’s salted butter). I also used chocolate chips and a few salted caramel chips I had lying around, and made sure to press some chips on top before baking for ‘perfection’. The pecans are “optional”, but not to me! I put pecans in, very nice addition, you can use any nut really, walnuts or almonds are nice too, but I had pecans so I used as advised and no regrets, I really enjoyed that woody pop of flavor.
Apart from my critiques, which I believe are solely due to a temperature difference of around 5 ambient degrees and also likely humidity/pressure, this is the bones of the TYPE of chocolate chip cookie I like most… thick, huge, and chewy, not thin and crispy and spread out over the parchment paper. The general advice will get you to that resultant form-held cookie. I have saved it for future use with notes. About to enjoy one of them now!
(note on chips: I used Decadent PC brand chips, I feel these are the optimal chocolate chip for Canadians as they are a little on the large side and hold their shape well, but any will do, including even chopping chunks of your favorite chocolate bar! or use a flavored chip like a peanut butter chip! 😀 This cookie would also be EXCELLENT with chocolate candies like M&Ms or the Canadian Smarties but not the USA kind. If I do it again I might use peanut butter chips and put a peanut butter thumbprint in the middle or be really extravagant and put a Reese’s cup quarter into the middle!)
I doctored these to suit my food sensitivities (gluten-free flour, soy-free margarine, and egg whites). The dough didn’t come out crumbly, it was smooth like regular cookie dough I’ve made, so I used an ice cream scoop, but they came out perfect. These are my idea of the perfect chocolate chip cookie, soft but chewy. Yum. Thanks so much! Definitely a keeper!
Joann, what kind/brand of flour have you found to work best?
these smacked