This recipe is for anyone on the hunt for a big batch chocolate chip cookies recipe. It's one of my favorite large batch chocolate chip cookies recipes, and it was inspired by a friend who says she never bakes for fewer than 12 people. It's very similar to the famous Land o'Lakes Five Star and Gold Medal's Extraordinary Chocolate Chip Cookies, but with slightly different ratios and leavening agents.
Five Star Chocolate Chip
What I like about these cookies is they're thick, crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. They are made with 100% butter, but the texture is almost as good as the texture of chocolate chip cookies made with shortening. Or maybe better. This is all so very subjective. I do think the brand of butter makes a difference and recommend using salted Land o' Lakes.
Large Batch Chocolate Chip Cookies Yield
These cookies can be made "normal" size, in which case the yield is about 50, or "jumbo" which will give you around 30. I tend to pack mine with different amounts of chocolate chips and nuts, so the yield is never exactly the same. However, the cookies are consistently great. They're thick, crinkly and soft with crispy edges.
Cream Cheese & Molasses Variation
A reader suggested replacing 3 tablespoons of butter with 3 tablespoons of cream cheese and adding a little extra molasses in with the butter. This makes the cookies slightly softer and darker and good for ice cream sandwiches. So if you want to try the ice cream sandwich variation, add the cream cheese and molasses, make the cookies larger and bake until barely done.
Some Notes
Weight of All-Purpose Flour and Dough
This recipe calls for 4 cups of flour. A cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 120 to 140 grams. I usually get around 130 grams per cup so I've always used 520 grams of flour total. I recently tested with Pillsbury brand bleached and got 120 grams per cup, so I tried the recipe with 480 grams of flour. The cookies were a little thinner with crisper edges, but still pretty thick. A middle ground for flour weight is 500 grams.
Recipe
Big Batch Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 4 cups all-purpose flour (spoon lightly into cups, don't pack) (500 grams)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 ½ cups salted butter, (3 sticks) (340 grams)**
- 1 cup sugar (200 grams)
- 1 ½ cups very firmly packed brown sugar (300 grams)
- 2 large eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla or vanilla bean paste
- 2 ½ cups semisweet chocolate chips (or a mix) -- You can use even more if you'd like.
Variations
- 2 teaspoons blackstrap or mild molasses (optional)
- 3 tablespoons cream cheese to replace 3 tablespoons of butter
Instructions
- Aerate your flour and measure 4 cups of flour by spooning it into the cups and leveling. Add the salt and baking soda and whisk or stir for about a minute or until you feel like everything is evenly blended. Set aside.
- Cut the butter into chunks and put it in the bowl of a stand mixer along with the sugar. Beat the butter and both sugars until light and creamy, stopping to scrape bowl often.
- Add the eggs one at a time and beat until blended, then add vanilla, increase mixer speed and beat for 1 minute, scraping bowl often.
- Add the flour mixture gradually, beating on the lowest speed with the paddle, until it is almost incorporated.
- Stir in the chocolate chips and continue stirring until all flour is absorbed.
- Using a cookie scoop, portion dough into balls on plates lined with plastic wrap. Cover portioned dough balls and chill until ready to bake. Yields will be different depending on size. You can make 50 rounded tablespoon cookies or 25 to 30 jumbo cookies. If you'd rather bake right away, that's fine too!
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Space about two inches apart on the sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes for smaller size cookies and about 13-15 minutes for larger size. Let cool five minutes and transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.
Anna says
Hello! You can freeze the dough for 3 months if tightly wrapped. The way that I do is I form the cookie mounds, freeze the shaped mounds, then lay the frozen mounds flat on one or two pieces of plastic wrap. I then wrap the frozen mounds tightly and put the wrapped mounds in a freezer bag, pressing out any excess air. Freezing the dough actually improves the texture of the cookies.
Banana says
this is an absolutely fantastic recipe! how long can i freeze the dough for?
Anna says
Cactus Bob, thank you for the comment. The slider is a feature that is part of the recipe card app. I am going to see if I can deactivate it because it's probably not accurate for most of the recipes due to the way I have my recipes formatted with gram amounts. I manually wrote in gram amounts before recipe card apps started including them. The smaller batch is just a half batch and should be about 24, but they are big cookies.
Thanks for mentioning the slider. That is something I need to look into. I wonder how many people even use it? Update: I deactivated it for now. Will put it back into play once I format recipes in a way that works with the slider.
Cactus says
In the notes, how many cookies is a "smaller batch"? I did 32 on the slider and then freaked out when I saw the notes .
Anna says
Hi Jackie, I'm glad you like this recipe! Thanks for leaving a review.
Jackie Konkel says
Awesome recipe. I added walnuts for a little crunch. They freeze well too!
Anna says
Shon, the dough should be on the dry side, but not crumbly. Maybe the flour was dry and just soaked up moisture. Some brands and types are dryer than others. I made a batch of these this morning after seeing your comment and mine came out as usual. They're thick cookies that are good for holding a lot of chocolate, but the dough wasn't crumbly. I emailed you and hope you email back so we can trade notes.
Shon Husband says
I weighed all my ingredients out perfectly, but my cookie dough came out crumbly
Sue says
This sounds like another great recipe!