the perfect {never flat!} chocolate chip cookie recipe (2024)

I’ve seen lots of chocolate chip cookie recipes floating around blogland, all of them claiming to be the best. Some call for melted butter or browned butter while others say melted butter is the root of all evil, at least where cookies are concerned. Some recipes use unsalted butter (I do NOT want to have to go to the store when I make cookies so please let me use normal butter) while other recipes insist you refrigerate the dough for hours or days before baking (not gonna happen at this house – if I want cookies, I want them now. Not in two days). Somebody please just give me a chocolate chip cookie recipe that uses normal ingredients, doesn’t require chilling the dough or letting butter soften on the counter all day, that results in a soft, chewy cookie that will NEVER EVER go flat!

Turns out my mother-in-law gave me that exact recipe 14 years ago. This recipe makes perfect (yup, perfect) cookies every time, even if you happen to nuke the butter a little too long (it happens to all of us). These cookes are soft and delicious and look as good as they taste. This is a big recipe, so you’ll have plenty of cookies to eat and plenty to share. In fact, you’ll probably have enough to freeze some balls of dough, giving you instant cookie gratification another day. This recipe is THE ONE.

You’ll find all your normal cookie ingredients here – butter and vanilla for lots of flavor (although you can make them with margarine in a pinch), plenty of brown sugar (and white as well), flour, soda, and salt. Sounds kind of like that Tollhouse recipe that’s famous for making super flat cookies, right? Well, we’re going to fix the flatness problem with a little bit of wheat flour and a touch of baking powder – you’ll end up with beautiful cookies that are chewy and cakey at the same time.

Now, I know you might not have whole wheat flour in your kitchen right now, but if you buy a 5 lb bag and keep it in the back of your fridge it will stay good a long time and make a lot of batches of cookies.

I recommend using a stand mixer when making these cookies because the dough is quite stiff at the end, plus it’s a huge batch. Back when I didn’t have a stand mixer I’d use a hand mixer for the first few steps, and then just use my hands to finish mixing in all the flour. It takes a few minutes longer, but it works, and it won’t kill your hand mixer.

We make nice sized cookies using this recipe – I roll out balls of dough that are nearly golf ball sized:

The other secret to perfect cookies is the perfect cooktime. I find that golf ball sized balls need to cook for exactly 9 minutes in my oven, and not a second longer. This gets them cooked enough that they aren’t doughy, but not long enough to get crunchy. They will look like the photo below when they are done – tops cracked and just a tiny hint of golden brown. Once you let them cool on the baking sheet for 3-4 minutes they set up enough to transfer beautifully to a cooling rack or plate.

Click here for a printable recipe card.BTW, did I mention this is a big batch? Don’t be scared off by the size – make the dough and scoop it out in balls, then freeze some on a cookie sheet until hard. Place in a ziplock bag and store in the freezer. Then when you want cookies, just take out as many balls of dough as you’d like and let them rest 15-20 minutes on a cookie sheet before baking (you may need to bake them a few minutes longer). I sometimes just bake two in my toaster oven when the kids are asleep…and that’s not one for me and one for my husband 😉

One last note – since it’s hard to perfectly measure flour without weighing it, pay attention to how thick your dough is once it’s all mixed up – if should be quite thick. If it’s not, you run the risk of flat cookies, so go ahead and add up to 1 more cup of either white or wheat flour until it’s nice and thick for perfect cookies.

Want more cookie recipes? Try these:

Mom’s sugar cookies + the best sugar cookie cream cheese frosting

Chocolate mint truffle gooey cookies

Easy double chocolate cake mix cookies