The Best Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies

Over the years, I’ve made SO MANY different chocolate chip cookie recipes. I have one on my blog that was the recipe my mom made growing up that I loved, but it still wasn’t my perfect chocolate chip cookie. I’ve made recipe after recipe looking for the perfect one. I have officially cracked my own code! This is MY ideal chocolate chip cookie, and it just might be yours too! Crispy on the edges, soft in the middle, loaded with chocolate, and sprinkled with sea salt to bring out the best flavor!

Thomas literally told me to never make another cookie haha, so that’s basically the best compliment I’ve ever gotten. Okay, here’s the recipe and all the tips and tricks I’ve learned!

Ingredients:

-1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature (required)

-1 cup cane sugar (or white sugar)

-1/2 cup brown sugar (light or dark)

-2 eggs, room temperature (required)

-2 tsp vanilla extract

-2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

-1 tsp sea salt

-1 tsp baking soda

-2 cups semi- sweet chocolate chips (feel free to sub dark chocolate or your preferred chocolate)

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter & sugar with a hand mixer until smooth & incorporated. Add in the eggs & vanilla extract & mix until combined. Add in the flour, salt, & baking soda. Mix until everything is well combined. Sprinkle in the chocolate chips (use can reserve some for topping or just add more). Using a spatula, mix in the chocolate chips. The batter should be thick and sticky. Form the dough into 12-14 large balls! They seem huge, but trust me on this one. This is how they get the perfect crispy to soft/ chewy ratio. They are supposed to be a bakery style/ size cookie. If you don’t like big cookies, just eat half, but good luck haha! You can make them smaller, but I promise making them this size is part of what makes them!

From here, you have three options. You can bake right away, refrigerate, or freeze the dough. If you want to bake them right away, you will still get a fabulous cookie, it just won’t be very crispy on the bottom. It will be most soft throughout. If that’s what you want to do, preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Place your cookies on a lined baking sheet. You will probably have to do 2 batches. If you want, you can top the cookies with extra chocolate chips. This also gives that bakery style look. Bake for 8-10 minutes until cooked but still soft in the center. When they are done, sprinkle with sea salt (I prefer fleur de sel or maldon sea salt) and let cool on the baking sheet! Make sure not to over bake, that would be tragic.

For refrigerated cookies, which is my ideal method, you can form your dough balls and refrigerate right on your baking sheet for at least an hour. You can also leave them in the fridge for up to 2 days and you’ll just bake them directly from the fridge. If you do them in the fridge for more than a few hours, I’d go ahead and store them in an airtight container. This step always seems like it takes too long, but Im telling you IT IS SO WORTH IT! Letting the dough sit for an hour or overnight lets the flavors come together & brings them out even more when baking them. It also creates the perfect cookie that’s crispy & caramelized on the edges and soft and doughy on the inside. It’s perfection! When you bake them, preheat your oven to 375F degrees. Take the cookies straight from the fridge to a lined baking sheet (if they aren’t on there already), and bake for 12-15 minutes until your cookies are crispy on the edges and still soft in the middle. They should have a little golden on the edges! Remove from oven, sprinkle with sea salt & let cool!

For the freezer version, all you have to do is store the dough balls in the freezer bag or you can just freeze some if you don’t want to cook all 12 at once! When you’re ready to bake, preheat your oven to 375F degrees. Once the oven is ready, place your cookies on a lined baking sheet and bake for 15-17 minutes until cookies are crispy on the edges and soft in the middle. This version will give you the crispiest edges with a super soft middle! They’re amazing! Sprinkle with sea salt and let cool on your baking sheet!

So that’s all the ways you can make the cookies! I froze a bunch so now we have cookie dough balls in the fridge to pull out and bake whenever we want to just make 1 or 2 cookies rather than a whole batch! Below are also some tips I’ve learned about the chocolate chip cookies as well as explaining why some things are done this certain way!

Cookie Tips:

-Baking at 375 degrees will make the cookies melt faster & get those crispy edges with a soft center AKA the ultimate cookie.

-Refrigerating the dough will help the flavors really come together! It also makes all the difference in baking to get that caramelization.

-Topping with sea salt will help bring out the flavor of the cookie without making it salty. It just basically enhances the flavor in your mouth!

-Making giant cookies will really give you those bakery style cookies! It’ll also make it so that the cookies are perfectly soft in the middle and crispy on the outside.

-Last thing that I didn’t have on hand but would do, 2 different types of chocolate! Like mixing 1 cup of dark chocolate & 1 cup of semi-sweet or milk chocolate. As well as using chocolate chunks (which I didn’t have) but will help to get bigger chocolate pockets!

 

I hope you guys enjoy these cookies! As you can tell, I am VERY passionate about them! Tag me on IG in your stories or posts if you make them! I want to hear what you think 🙂

Xoxo,

Lex