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Chocolate Chip Cookies

Name: Chocolate Chip Cookies
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 12 min
Total time: 27 min
Yield: 24 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 2 cups Flour; 1 tsp Baking soda; 0.5 tsp Salt; 170 g Unsalted butter; 1 cup Brown sugar; 0.5 cup White sugar; 2 Eggs; 2 tsp Vanilla extract; 2 cups Chocolate chips

Crisp at the edges, chewy in the middle — the icon of American home baking. Cream butter with sugar, fold in a generous pile of chocolate chips, and bake it all from one bowl; with just an oven, anyone can nail this classic.

Steps

Heat the oven to 180C and line a baking sheet with parchment.
⏲ 10 min
Whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together in a bowl.
⏲ 1 min
Cream the room-temperature butter with both sugars until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
⏲ 3 min
Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla.
⏲ 1 min 30 sec
Fold in the dry ingredients just until no flour shows, then stir in the chocolate chips.
⏲ 1 min 30 sec
Scoop rounded spoonfuls (about 2 tbsp) onto the sheet, spacing them well apart.
⏲ 3 min
Bake 10-12 minutes, until the edges are golden but the centers still look slightly underdone.
⏲ 12 min
Cool on the sheet 5 minutes to set, then transfer to a rack.
⏲ 5 min

Variations

Double chocolate: Replace some flour with cocoa powder.
Walnut or pecan: Fold in chopped nuts for crunch.
Sea-salt cookies: Sprinkle flaky salt on top before baking.
Oatmeal cookies: Add rolled oats and raisins.

Tips

Use room-temperature butter — too melted and the cookies spread flat.
Chilling the dough 30 minutes curbs spreading and makes them chewier.
Pull them out looking slightly underbaked; they set as they cool for a soft center.
More brown sugar means chewy; more white sugar means crisp.

More detail and the reasons why (4)

That ratio is chemistry, and it is also why the recipe uses baking soda. Brown sugar is sugar with molasses in it, and molasses is both acidic and hygroscopic. Acidic means it is the acid the bicarbonate needs in order to make any gas at all — the same pairing Irish soda bread is built on — so swapping all of it for white sugar leaves you with soda and nothing to react with. Hygroscopic means it holds on to water, and water in the finished cookie is what "chewy" means. White sugar has neither property: it dissolves, thins the dough while it bakes, and sets crisp.
Butter temperature decides spread, and the mechanism is a race. A cookie spreads while its fat is liquid and stops when the flour and egg set. Creamed room-temperature butter is holding air and is solid at the start, so the dough has to warm through before it can move (what sugar does covers the sugar's part in it). Melted butter has no air and is already liquid, so spreading begins immediately and wins the race — which is exactly what the tip means by "too melted and they spread flat". Chilling the dough thirty minutes lengthens the head start. Pound cake is the page that explains creaming itself, and chiffon cake is the opposite case, where a liquid oil is chosen on purpose.
They are not finished when they come out. A dough this rich in sugar and fat is still soft at 180°C and sets as it cools, so the centre firms up on the tray rather than in the oven. Pulling them looking underdone is not a preference, it is the only way to end up with a soft middle — five minutes on the hot sheet is part of the bake.
What each ingredient is actually for: two sugars for the texture above, two eggs for structure and water, and the salt for contrast rather than seasoning — shortbread is the page that explains what "short" means and why a biscuit with no liquid at all crumbles instead.