Perfect “American-Style” Chocolate Chip Cookies

My partner regularly complains that it’s impossible to get good chocolate chip cookies in Australia. Crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside. Well, no more.

This recipe is adapted from this recipe, but adjusted for proper metric units (I hate the way American recipes convert to metric units… we still use cups!), and with a couple of simplifications.

Her review is that I nailed it. She’s a critic of my food, so I take that as praise!

Usual disclaimer: I’m not a food blogger or chef, just someone who likes to do things right. I like baking as much as I like coding, tinkering on guitars, or practising combat sports, so I keep my own recipes here for my own records — and to share them.

For context, Australian cookies are often “breadier”. I presume there are good cookies out there, but they’re just not available everywhere, and definitely not cheap.

… I mean, many complain that “cookies” isn’t even an Australian word; older generation people often say “biscuits”. A packaged biscuit in Australia is basically a flat, hard military-grade disc that’s unpleasantly hard when fresh and unpleasantly soft when stale. It gets nothing right. It’s a different animal. So I have no qualms about using the word “cookies”.

Also, if anyone tells me not to use a word for some arbitrary reason, I’ll tell them I speak English better than them, better than 99.99% of people (Dunning Kruger can eat a bag), and definitely better than anyone who slavishly conforms to prescriptivist language norms, so they can get stuffed. (/rant)

Ingredients

Makes roughly 18–20 large cookies. All weights are metric; an electric mixer or KitchenAid with paddle is handy.

Dry ingredients

• 270 g plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda, not baking powder)
• 2 tsp cornflour (cornstarch)
• 1 tsp fine cooking salt

Wet ingredients

• 175 g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 200 g brown sugar, lightly packed
• 100 g white sugar
• 2 large eggs (about 100 g without shells)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Mix-ins

• 200 g dark chocolate chips or chopped dark chocolate, plus a handful for topping

Instructions

Make and chill the dough

1. Whisk together the plain flour, bicarbonate of soda, cornflour and salt in a medium bowl.
2. Beat the cooled, melted butter with the brown sugar and white sugar for about 1 minute until creamy and uniform. Add the eggs and vanilla; beat just until combined.
3. Mix in the dry ingredients in a few additions, stopping as soon as no flour patches remain. Fold in the chocolate chips (and toasted walnuts, if using).
4. Cover and refrigerate the dough for 30–60 minutes. Chilling limits spreading; longer is fine.

Shape and bake

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C fan-forced and line two trays with baking paper. Bake on a middle rack; adjust the time if your oven runs hot or cold.
2. Portion with a roughly 60 mL scoop, roll each into a ball, then tear it in half. Rejoin the halves with their rough, torn sides up for the craggy café-style top. For smaller cookies use about 30 mL of dough.
3. Press a few extra chocolate chips onto the tops. Space well apart: I fit about 4–6 large cookies per tray.
4. Bake the large cookies for about 10 minutes (smaller ones about 9 minutes). The edges should be set and lightly browned, while the centres still look soft. Start with a test tray; some ovens need 9–12 minutes. For a secondary thermometer check, the dough centre may be roughly 85–90°C at this stage, but this is an approximate, uncalibrated guide for this recipe, not a fixed target. Avoid touching chocolate with the probe.
5. Leave the cookies on their hot tray for 10–15 minutes to finish setting before transferring them to a rack. Don’t wait until the centres look fully firm in the oven.

Variations

Toasted walnut chocolate chip cookies

Add 100 g roughly chopped walnuts. For better flavour, spread them on a tray and toast at 160°C fan-forced for 7–9 minutes, stirring once and watching for a nutty aroma; cool completely before folding into the dough with the chocolate. For a less crowded cookie, reduce the chocolate to about 150 g.

Gluten-free

Replace the 270 g plain flour with 270 g gluten-free plain flour blend designed for 1:1 baking substitutions, ideally one that already includes a binder such as xanthan gum. White Wings Gluten Free Plain Flour is an Australian supermarket option with added vegetable gums. Do not add extra xanthan gum if your blend already contains it. Chill for at least 1 hour (overnight is even better) to hydrate the starches, and allow for a slightly different spread or a minute or two more baking. The substitution is a well-established starting point, but I haven’t tested this exact dough gluten-free. For the rationale, see King Arthur Baking’s gluten-free cookie advice. Use gluten-free-labelled chocolate and cornflour if making these for someone with coeliac disease.

Storage

Keep fully cooled cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for about 3 days, or freeze for longer storage. Refrigeration tends to dry them out.