Soft chocolate chip cookies top the list for culinary appeal. Recipes abound for chocolate chip cookies but it can be somewhat harder to find a reliable recipe for soft cookies, wherein the cookies turn out truly soft. Often, once cookies are baked, and as they cool, they become either chewy, crispy, crunchy or downright hard. Whether chocolate chip cookies are soft or hard depends on recipe ingredients.
For those desiring rich-tasting, soft chocolate chip cookies, it all starts with the right blend of ingredients and care during baking so that cookies bake up soft and, more important still, stay soft after cooling.
Make-or-Break Factors for Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
Three factors can make or break cookie texture:
- Type of sugar used
- Leavening agent
- How long cookies are baked
Using brown sugar will result in a softer chocolate chip cookie. Baking soda is the leavening agent of choice and it is important to not over-bake cookies to ensure a soft and tender texture that remains after cookies cool.
How to Make Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
Those who prefer "tender over crunchy" will enjoy this recipe for perfectly soft chocolate chip cookies. Chocolate chips and chunks are used instead of regular chips.
- 1 cup butter
- 1 1/2 cup light brown sugar
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 2 eggs
- Cream together butter and brown sugar until well mixed.
- Add in vanilla and eggs and stir until ingredients are thoroughly blended.
- 2 1/2 cups of flour
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. salt
Stir in dry ingredients until cookie dough forms into a ball and then add:
- 300 g pkg. of real semi-sweet chocolate chips and chunks
When ingredients are mixed, cookie dough will be sticky and moist. (Do not add more flour.)
Baking Tips for Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
- Roll dough into 1'' balls and place on a cookie sheet.
- Position oven rack 3/4 of the way towards top of oven.
- Bake cookies for 15 minutes, then reduce oven heat to 250 degrees and continue baking until cookies are a light brown. (Do not overcook cookies, which can contribute to hardening.) The best soft chocolate chip cookies are cooked in the middle while still having a delightfully soft texture, even after they have cooled.
- Remove cookies from oven and from cookie sheet so that cookies do not continue to bake from residual pan heat.
- Place cookies on a flat surface so that they do not become misshapen as they cool.
- Store cookies in an air-tight container to ensure they stay soft and do not dry out.
Delicious Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
Filled with chips and chunks and containing real butter, these chocolate chip cookies are bursting with rich flavor and their soft, tender texture is hard to beat.
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Melody Rhodes - M. Rhodes is author of the Bedbug Books. She's been published in Canada, U.S. U.K. & NZ and has won awards for her poetry/prose.
