The Ultimate Top 3 Tips for Mind-Blowing Chocolate Chip Cookies
If there was one food we were a little bit too obsessed with in 2019, it was chocolate chip cookies. But really, is there a bad time to go gaga (or can you really go overboard?) for these most classic of treats? And yet there is always more to learn! In 2019 we ran two Kitchn Showdowns to find our ultimate chocolate chip cookies, and both yielded some learnings. If you want to improve your chocolate chip cookies, try one, or all three, of these smart, easy tips.
First, What Is the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie of All?
Depends on how much time you have. If you want to go full-on perfection, you need to invest some time, writes our kitchen tester of his test of high-effort chocolate chip cookies and the winner, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s awesome cookies.
Read the full review: This Might Be the Most High-Effort Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe Ever (but It’s Worth It)
If you want something a little more everyday, check out our more weekday chocolate chip cookie recipe Showdown where the winner was Alton Brown’s recipe.
Read the full review: Alton Brown’s Secret for a Perfectly Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie
3 Game-Changing Cookie Tips
But maybe you don’t want to use one of these recipes; maybe you have another favorite or even one you have memorized. (Like this perfect one for parents to memorize.) There are three tips that will make ANY chocolate chip cookie better and also happen to be super easy.
1. Skip the chips! Use discs instead.
That’s right: The first tip is to actually skip the chips and use chocolate discs or wafers instead. We learned this tip from the high-performing Jacques Torres cookie recipe. If you want to try it, we really like these high-quality Callebaut chocolate wafers, which are on Amazon Prime and could be here in time for the weekend.
2. Age the dough. Yes, it’s game-changing.
Yes, an overnight chill works wonders in deepening flavor and ripening the dough into a marvel of rich taste. Our Studio Food Editor, Jesse (a cookie geek to own all geeks!), explains why this works so well, and how long to age the dough for best results here.
3. Tear and stack the dough for rippled chewy cookies.
This amazingly smart tip is one we learned from Midwest baking maven Shauna Sever. Instead of banging the pan or other torturous tricks, if you want that gorgeous rippled cookie with chewy layers, tear each dough ball in half then stack it. So simple! So ingenious! And it works! You must try it.
There you have it — the best chocolate chip cookies we made this year, and the three tips that will take your next batch into the stratosphere. Happy baking! (And if you have another hot tip for chocolate chip cookies we are ALL ears. Dish below, please.)
Oh, P.S.: Did you know you can make chocolate chip cookies in the air fryer? Okay, okay, I’ll stop now.