These chewy lightly golden Chocolate Chunk Cookies include dark chocolate chunks and a trick to achieving the best chocolate chunk cookies in your home. You could also add other mix-in's to these cookies, such as walnuts, butterscotch chips or even potato chips with the ideal base to create the best cookies in this recipe.
Table of Contents
These classic Chocolate Chunk Cookies are ideal for any occasion though if you enjoy a slight twist then these Cookies and Cream Cookies are perfect or a hefty scoop of Biscoff makes these a great lunchbox filler. Or these classic New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies are also a fantastic snack.
Ingredients and substitutions for Chocolate Chunk Cookies
- Butter: Unsalted butter is used for the cookie, but if all you have on hand is salted, that works as a fine substitute, just leave out any salt suggested in the recipe.
- Sugars: The brown sugar helps to make the cookies chewy, and superfine or caster sugar helps sweeten. These make a great combination, though you could completely replace with brown sugar.
- Egg: The egg binds and adds structure to our cookies resulting in that soft interior that compliments the sugar and butter.
- Flour: Plain or all purpose flour is best for a nice light cookie crumb.
- Baking powder: This helps our cookies rise so they are not stodgy.
- Baking soda: This helps our cookies rise alongside the baking powder avoiding a heavy dense cookie.
- Chocolate: Chocolate with cocoa solids at least 50% were used to really allow the sweet cookie dough to shine and let our chocolate be full of flavor. You could replace with chocolate chips, if you prefer.
See recipe card for quantities.
How to make Chocolate Chunk Cookies:
Step 1: Whip it: Beat the butter and sugars until pale and fluffy.
Step 2: Egg it: Add in the vanilla extract and egg and beat until well combined and fluffy.
Step 3: Dry mixture: Toss the dry ingredients into a separate bowl and stir together. Toss into the wet mixture and beat on low until just combined.
Step 4: Chunks: Stir in ⅔ of the chocolate chunks until just combined.
Step 5: Scoop up: Portions of dough, pressing a few chocolate chunks into the top and freezing for 30 minutes.
Step 6: Bake: Lightly press onto your baking tray and bake until golden.
Step 7: Cool before serving: Remove and allow to cool fully before grabbing one and enjoy!
FAQ’s for the best Chocolate Chunk Cookies
The biggest reason to freeze the cookies is to allow the butter to firm up to avoid flat cookies, but the best outcome from freezing our dough is that the ingredients have time to really marinate together which results in a fuller flavored cookie.
Four tests were done on this dough and so it’s best to outline the results in detail below to further explain why freezing the dough matters.
No chill cookies: Resulted in a cakey texture and the flavor was ‘muted’, like more sugar was needed.
Chilled for 30 minutes: Had a nice firm edge, but again the sweetness factor was missing, like more sugar was needed.
Cookie dough chilled for 60 minutes: Had a firm crunchy edge like the 30 minute dough, but they tasted sweeter than the previous two.
Frozen for 30 minutes: had that perfect cookie texture not being too thin or thick; with a nice chewy center but firm outer edge without being ‘crunchy’. The biggest difference was that the sweetness was perfect, any more sugar and it would have been too sweet. Also, the exterior was more golden than all other cookies giving the proper cookie appearance also.
*Please note the photos here reflect an older version of this recipe post. It has since been updated with newer photos, but the recipe has not been changed.
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Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Ingredients
- 195 grams / 6.8 ounces butter room temperature
- 200 grams / 1 cup brown sugar
- 100 grams / ½ cup superfine/caster sugar
- 110 grams / 2 large eggs room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 400 grams / 2 ½ cups plain flour
- 8 grams / 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 3 grams / ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon sea or kosher salt
- 220 grams / 7.76 ounces chocolate chopped into chunks
Instructions
- Place the butter and sugars into a bowl and beat on medium until pale and fluffy, approximately 3 minutes with an electric mixer.
- Add the eggs and vanilla extract continue to beat until well combined, beating for a further minute.
- In a separate bowl, toss the flour, baking powder and baking soda and salt and stir to combine.
- Toss into butter mixture and combine on low until no dry portions remain in your bowl.
- Add ⅔’s of the chocolate chunks to the cookie dough and stir until fully incorporated.
- Scoop up portions of dough, pressing a few chocolate chunks into the top.
- Set 4-6 portions of the prepared cookie dough into your freezer for 30 minutes
- Preheat the oven to 180C/350F and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.
- Place onto your baking tray allowing ensuring there is 1 ½ inches between each cookie.
- Bake for 11 minutes until lightly golden on the edges.
- Remove and allow to cool, setting onto your cooling rack.
- Serve up with a glass of milk.
- Dig in!
Notes
- Chocolate: Chocolate with cocoa solids at least 50% were used to really allow the sweet cookie dough to shine and let our chocolate be full of flavor. You could replace with chocolate chips, if you prefer.
- Ice Cream Scoop: The scoop used here creates medium or regular sized cookies with a diameter of 5 centimeters / 1.97 inches.
- Freezing the cookie dough for 30 minutes: The biggest reason to freeze the cookies is to allow the butter to firm up to avoid flat cookies, but the best outcome from freezing our dough is that the ingredients have time to really marinate together which results in a fuller flavored cookie. Frozen for 30 minutes had that perfect cookie texture not being too thin or thick; with a nice chewy center but firm outer edge without being ‘crunchy’.
- Freezing the cookie dough: You can freeze and bake later, simply scoop into your preferred cookies and wrap tightly or place into a covered container.
- Baking from frozen: If you prefer to only bake a portion of the cookie dough; it's best to scoop into your cookies and freeze. When ready to bake, simply remove the portions of dough you want to bake and allow to sit at room temperature for around 10-15 mintues whilst you preheat your oven. It is best to bake frozen cookie dough at a lower oven temperature of 160C/320F for approximately 14 minutes (if you have dough around the same size as mentioned in the ice cream scoop note above. If your dough is smaller or larger than the size mentioned above, it is best to decrease or increase as per the size of your cookie dough).
- Best kept: In a covered container where they will keep for up to 4 days.
Nutrition
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