The Very Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is a dangerously bold claim. Everyone has their own favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, possibly handed down from a mother or nonna, and a recipe from some girl on the internet cannot possibly be better.

Friends, I hear you. I have that perfect recipe from my own mom… but these are simply the very best chocolate chip cookies I’ve eaten in my entire life. So I’m eating my humble pie (cookies?) and sharing it with you, because everyone needs to experience the incredibly mind-blowingly-perfect toffee-flavored-browned-butter cookie magic going on here.

And if you need one more way to treat mom this weekend, I promise this is your key to being her favorite child. (Proud to say I’ve held that title for a quarter-century – being an only child has nothing to do with it. It’s all about the cookies.)

Unlike most things I post here, these aren’t an original recipe. They’re from the good people of America’s Test Kitchen and I didn’t even discover them myself. A good friend hosts fantastic parties where everyone else has a great time on the patio and he & I have a great time in the kitchen, and last time we went over he pulled these out of the oven.

I was utterly addicted at the first bite. He sent us home with half a dozen and we devoured all of them the next morning for breakfast.

Brown butter is pretty much the most delicious thing that can come out of a saucepan but it’s tricky to adapt traditional cookie recipes that rely on cold butter. These cookies are soft and chewy all the way through except for a teeny bit of crunch at the edges, and the brown butter just melts in your mouth.

Make a batch for your mom, make a batch for your neighbors, make a batch for yourself. They will all be gone within the day and you’ll have friends knocking on your door to see if there are any more in the oven.

These are perfection as-is, end of story. But I had a giant bag of peanut butter M&Ms staring me down as I mixed the first batch and I couldn’t resist because self-control = zero.

I’m happy to report that you truly can’t go wrong with this recipe and also that peanut butter M&Ms make even the very best even better. Amen.

Print Recipe

The Very Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Honest-to-goodness the very best chocolate chip cookies with toffee-flavored-browned-butter magic.

Prep Time20 minutes mins

Cook Time10 minutes mins

Cooling Time15 minutes mins

Total Time45 minutes mins

Course: Cookies

Cuisine: American

Servings: 2 dozen

Calories: 180kcal

Author: Mountain Cravings

Ingredients

• 14 T. butter
• 3½ oz. sugar (1/2 cup)
• 5¼ oz. dark brown sugar (3/4 cup)
• 1 t. salt
• 2 t. vanilla
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• ½ t. baking soda
• 8¾ oz. flour (1¾ cups)
• 1¼ cups semisweet chocolate chips

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 375°.
• Melt 10 T. butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Swirl constantly for another 2-3 minutes, until dark brown flecks appear and it smells wonderfully nutty.
• Remove skillet from heat and pour butter into a large mixing bowl. Add remaining 4 T. butter and stir until completely melted.
• Whisk in sugars, salt, vanilla, egg, and egg yolks.
• First Rest: Let batter rest for 3 minutes, then whisk for 30 seconds.
• Second Rest: Let batter rest for 3 minutes, then whisk for 30 seconds.
• Final Rest: Let batter rest for 3 minutes, then whisk for 30 seconds. Batter should be shiny, completely smooth, and much lighter in color.
• Fold in baking soda and flour, mixing only until incorporated. Fold in chocolate chips.
• Divide dough in 24 balls. Arrange evenly on parchment-covered baking sheets, 12 cookies per sheet.
• Bake at 375° for 9-12 minutes, rotating halfway through.

  Err on the side of underbaked – cookies will be lightly golden brown and slightly puffy, then fall during cooling.
• Set baking sheets on wire racks to cool for at least 15 minutes.

Notes

Adapted from America’s Test Kitchen.

I’m almost always guilty of measuring by volume rather than weight, but this is a recipe where it truly counts – dust off your kitchen scale if you have one!

This page contains affiliate links for handpicked products I recommend. MORE →
Thanks for supporting Mountain Cravings!