This is a one bowl version of a recipe called Best Big Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies. While I can’t say it’s my favorite of all chocolate chip cookies, this one egg and one yolk chocolate chip cookie recipe has quite a following.
I’ve played with it over the years by changing up the flour, using cultured butter and testing out different brands and types of sugar. Pretty much any variation works, and the texture is always crispy on the outside and chewy in the center.
The original recipe is here.
Below is the one bowl method I use.
Recipe
Another One Bowl Cookie
Another One Bowl Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
Ingredients
- 12 tablespoons unsalted butter 170 grams
- 1 cup packed light brown sugar 200 grams
- 1/2 cup white sugar 100 grams
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt plus an extra pinch 1/8 tsp
- 2 cups all-purpose flour 250 grams
- 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips feel free to add more or use less
Instructions
- Melt butter in a large microwave-safe mixing bowl.
- With a whisk or just a big spoon, beat both sugars into melted butter. Let cool for about 5 minutes, and then beat in vanilla, egg and egg yolk.
- When mixture is well blended, beat in baking soda and salt, scraping sides of bowl to make sure baking soda is evenly distributed. Add flour and stir just until it is mixed in. Add chocolate chips. Chill dough for 1 hour or until pretty firm.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment.
- Scoop up tablespoonfuls of dough and drop 1 inch mounds (approx) onto cookie sheets spacing about 3 inches apart. Bake for 13-15 minutes or until cookies appear done and lightly browned around edges.
- Cool on sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a rack to finish cooling
- Makes 18-24, depending on how big you make your mounds and whether or not you add the extra chips
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
Ellen
I’ve made this numerous times for my husband now and it seems we both can’t get enough of it! I’m baking a fresh batch right now. So far, my ultimate favorite chocolate chip cookie! Aloha!!
Anna
I think maybe it was the size that did it. If the cookies are large, they will be less baked in the center and definitely chewier. But honestly, I find very few chocolate chip cookies acceptable on the second day. Some recipes keep well, but I don’t recall this as being one of them.
Krisma
I tried this recipe today (the original one) and I didn’t have much luck. How do you keep it chewy for more than a day and how do you keep the underside of the cookies nice and golden brown? I baked my cookies at 325 for 13 minutes and left it on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes. It tastes good but it’s not chewy and becomes dry after a few hours. My cookies were pretty small. Was that my problem? Should I make a bigger cookie so its chewy and stays that way for days?
I need help!
Anne Sage
Hi Anna,
This has been one of my favourite recipes for a while. I think the name on allrecipes has something to do with it. Who wouldn’t want cookies described as “best, big, fat and chewy”?
I’ve also discovered that the recipe makes great blondies: http://www.annesage.com/blog/2008/07/accidental-blon.html
And I totally feel you on being nervous about social events. Isn’t it so much less stressful to make a batch of cookies and camp out in front of the TV? Still, I know you’ll have a great time in San Francisco. Break a leg!
Anne
Anna
Betsy, that’s how I do it. I cream with a hand held electric mixer and mix the dry ingredients in with a spoon. A lot of times I don’t even use a hand mixer to cream — just elbow grease! Sometimes elbow grease isn’t enough, but for a lot of the cookies I make, creaming by hand is fine.
betsy
My hand mixer just broke — can I do this by hand (I wasn’t sure if you used a mixture).
If you don’t mind a general question…. when making a recipe that has a fairly thick batter, is it common to generally mix in the flour by hand, but do the earlier steps (creaming the butter etc by hand mixer).
Thanks, love the blog.
mai
just made the cookies today for the kids’ bicycle race and they were a huge hit. Thanks for sharing!
HeartofGlass
Thanks Heidi–I love to know the science behind cooking, and now melting the butter makes so much sense! I think I will try melted butter the next cookie recipe I make because I like dense, blondie/brownie textures!
Suzanne
I stumbled on your website last week while searching google for cookies…thanks to you I’ve just made a list of “must try” goodies and I don’t know when it will end! I do have a question unrelated to recent posts…do you have ideas on what i can use to replace cinnamon in recipes for things like coffee cake? i know i’m the oddball, but i’m just not a cinnamon fan. 🙂 thanks!
Heidi
These are my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe (the Cooks’Illustrated/American Test Kitchen version), so I’m glad you tried them!
For more background on the melted butter, etc., here is the original info I found:
Thick & Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe By :
Serving Size : 18 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories : Cookies/Bars
Amount Measure Ingredient — Preparation Method
——– ———— ——————————–
2 1/8 cups all-purpose flour — (2 cups plus 2 tablespoons)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
12 tablespoons unsalted butter — (1 1/2 sticks)
melted and cooled until warm
1 cup light or dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cups semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips — (1 to 2)
1. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Adjust oven racks to upper- and lower- middle positions. Mix flour, salt, and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside.
2. Either by hand or with electric mixer, mix butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. Mix in egg, yolk, and vanilla. Add dry ingredients; mix until just combined. Stir in desired amount of chips.
3. Form scant 1/4 cup dough into ball. Holding dough ball using fingertips of both hands, pull into two equal halves. Each half will have a jagged surface where it was ripped from the other; rotate each half up so the jagged surface faced the ceiling and press the halves back into one ball so that the top surface remains jagged. (The nooks and crannies you have created will give the baked cookies an attractive and somewhat rough, uneven appearance.) Place formed dough onto one of two parchment paper-lined cookie sheets, about 9 balls per sheet.
4. Bake, reversing cookies sheets’ positions halfway through baking, until cookies are light golden brown and outer edges start to harden yet centers are still soft and puffy, 15 to 18 minutes (start checking at 13 minutes). Cool cookies on cookie sheets. Serve or store in airtight container.
Recipe provided by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated.
Weight Watchers: 1 cookie = 5 points
Source:
“Cook’s Illustrated”
NOTES From Cooks Illustrated : Getting the Recipe Right
Most cookies start with creamed butter. Creaming incorporates air into the dough, resulting in an undesirable (in these cookies) lightness. Our thoughts sifted to chewy brownies and blondies, both of which typically begin with melted butter. We tried both creamed and melted butter and found that melted butter did indeed give us the dense, chewy texture that we were after. Then, we tried unbleached and bleached flour to see which would yield the most tender cookie. Bleached flour, with less protein than unbleached flour, helps make the cookie crispy and crunchy on the outside and tender inside. The texture of the just-baked cookies was good, but as they cooled, they hardened.
We turned to the one factor that we hadn’t yet fully examined–the egg factor–and found that one whole egg plus one egg yolk keeps the cookies soft and pliable hours after emerging from the oven. Also, cooling the cookies directly on the cookie sheet promotes the soft, chewy texture. Finally, we had a thick, chewy chocolate-chip cookie that could rival any gourmet bakery’s.
HeartofGlass
What does using melted butter ‘add’ or change to the classic recipe for chocolate chip cookies? Did the recipe yield 18 like it said on the site–18 seems low for the amount of flour.
I would love a ‘small batch’ recipe book from you just as Clumbsy would like a ‘one bowl’ book!
Debbie G
Boy do they look good. I will definitely try these.
HoneyB
These look yummy…I’ll take two please, with a glass of milk! 🙂
Liz
I’m just wondering…how many did this make?
Michelle W. in Calif.
It does sound like the ATK recipe, the egg and the egg yolk sounded familiar to me! I’ve made that recipe (though now I’ll try the one bowl method!) and scooped them into balls, frozen them individually, then put them in freezer bags in batches, to be baked later! They turn out quite well…
Katrina
It’s the Best Big Fat Chewy! Great cookie. It’s the one my mom makes to sell at the farmer’s market. She makes them really big and sells them for $1 each. They sell great.
I’ve made this one a number of times.
Yours look yummy.
VeggieGirl
The chocolate chips in those cookies look ridiculously perfect – love it :0)
Susan
i’m currently trying to find the next cc cookie recipe in my search for the ultimate! i’ve bookmarked this one to try. thanks.
Pat
This is basically the same as the America’s Test Kitchen recipe. I made it a couple of months ago for the first time and it is one of the best chocolate chip cookie recipes I have tried. Everyone loved them. I think it’s my new “all time” favorite, at least for now. I too am always on the look out for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. I really like a cookie that is somewhat soft in the center with lots of chips and a little chunky rather than flat and I thought these fit the bill pretty well. Yours look that same as the ones I made, so I guess the recipe yields good results…and I do love a “one bowl” clean up.
Clumbsy Cookie
I’ve made the NY Times cookies today, the dough is now “sleeping” in the fridge. I just baked one today (like Katrina did) and it was a huge very good cookie. Anyway I’ll get back to that when the waiting hours have passed.
Have you ever considered making a “one bowl” book? I’m a bit obssessed with the “one bowl method” I know. It’s just because when I was studing pastry, in the school I had to wash so many bowls I think it got me traumatized…
I think a “one bowl method” book would be a great sucess!