These chocolate chocolate chip cookies are my family’s answer to chocolate cravings. We love the fudgy cookie dough, which has the texture and flavor of brownies, and the chocolate chunks and semi-sweet chips that melt into the cookie, creating the perfect chocolate flavor. Serve these with a tall glass of cold milk and you have a decadent treat that everyone loves!
Letting Dough Rest
You will notice that in this recipe we are having the batter sit for thirty minutes on the counter. (No need to pop it in the refrigerator.) Letting a dough sit can provide multiple different functions. In this recipe it helps the dry ingredients hydrate which lead to cookies that brown more evenly and are more likely to have a crisp exterior and a chewy center. It also gives fats the time to solidify, making for cookies that spread less. In this case, we are giving that melted chocolate a bit of a chance to solidify and lead to a better cookie. While it is tempting to skip this step, don’t do it!
First you have a rich cocoa powder that is mixed in with the flour. That’s the base for the cookie batter, which makes these cookies rich and chocolatey. Next, semi-sweet chocolate chips melt into the cookies while baking to create a fudgy center in the cookies. Finally, dark chocolate chunks are mixed in throughout. A step up from chocolate chips, you will love adding these to your cookies.
Combine dry ingredients. Whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt and set aside. Mix wet ingredients. Cream together the brown sugar, white sugar, and butter, then add the eggs and vanilla. Combine wet and dry ingredients. See my tips for this step below. Add the chocolate. Mix in the melted and cooled chocolate followed by the chocolate chunks. Let the batter sit for 30 minutes. Read more about this important step below. Form into cookies. Use a cookie scoop to form the dough into balls. Place the dough balls on a baking sheet. Add extra chocolate chunks to the tops to have the cookies look like pictured. Bake the cookies. Take them out of the oven, and after two minutes transfer to a cooling rack to fully cool. Enjoy!
Avoiding Overmixing
Overmixing cookie dough can lead to tough cookies due to the overactivation of gluten in the flour. To prevent this, I recommend adding the dry ingredients all at once. Begin by incorporating the dry ingredients on low speed to prevent flour from flying out of the bowl. Then, briefly mix on high speed just until the flour is incorporated. This method reduces mixing time compared to adding the flour gradually, reducing the changes of the dough being overmixed.
Use room-temperature butter. You should be able to push your finger into it and make a small dent but not go all the way through. Want to speed this up? Cut your butter into one-inch pieces and leave it on the counter for a half hour. Your eggs also need to be at room temperature. To speed this up, fill a bowl with lukewarm water and leave the eggs in there for a few minutes. It’s really important to measure your flour correctly. Scoop the flour into the measuring cup and level it off. If you scoop right out of your flour container using your measuring cup, you will end up with significantly more flour. I share more on this below. Use fresh baking powder. To test your baking powder, mix a little bit with some water. It should bubble up right away, if it doesn’t it is time to get fresh baking powder. Make sure you cream your butter and sugar together for at least three minutes. It needs to not just be mixed, it needs to be light and fluffy. The sugar actually beats air into the butter and that’s key in baking these chocolate cookies. Your pans can’t be hot. If you are baking in batches and need to use your baking sheets more than once, you need to make sure that they have cooled before you put more dough on them. Your best bet is to have a few different pans that you can cycle through to make batches, letting the pans cool for a solid 15 to 20 minutes before adding more dough to them. Use a cookie scoop. This isn’t essential, but I find that using a scoop helps to keep all your cookies the same size for consistent baking and it also makes the process of getting the cookies into ball form so much faster!
Fluff the flour. Whisk the flour in the container or bag it’s stored in. Use a spoon to scoop the flour. Use a spoon to scoop the flour from the container into a dry measuring cup, allowing it to pile above the rim. Level it off. Use the flat edge of a spatula to level off the extra flour. You want to make sure the flour is even with the top edge of the cup.
Storing and Freezing Chocolate Cookies
If you want to freeze the cookies after they are baked, allow them to completely cool then transfer them to a freezer-safe bag or container. Store in the freezer for up to three months. Enjoy straight from the freezer or allow to thaw on the counter.
Prepare the dough and scoop into balls. Instead of putting them in the oven, place the dough balls on a parchment-lined plate or baking sheet. Flash freeze the dough by putting the plate or baking sheet in the freezer for 30 minutes. This prevents them from sticking together later. Transfer the dough balls to a freezer-safe container and store in the freezer for up to three months. When you are ready to bake the cookies, put the frozen dough (as many cookies as you would like to bake), on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 11 to 12 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Please let me know in the comments below what you think of this Chocolate Cookies recipe, I love hearing from you!
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