Double Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe
These double chocolate chip cookies bring together both cocoa powder and chocolate chips in fudgy chocolate cookies that are perfect for chocolate lovers everywhere. Made with cold butter, the dough does not need to be chilled. Top them off with a sprinkle of kosher or flaky sea salt to highlight their indulgent chocolate deliciousness and you may just find they are your new favorite chocolate treat.
Fudgy Chocolate Cookie
So many recipes for chocolate chocolate chip cookies use the word “chewy” to describe the texture, but not these cookies. If I had to describe these cookies in a word, it would be fudgy. While the outside makes you think they are going to be cakelike, the inside is closer to the center of a fudgy brownie.
Fresh out of the oven it’s almost (almost!) like having a single serve brownie. The bottoms are crisp like an edge piece, the tops are soft, and the centers are gooey fudgy deliciousness. Once they cool the tops firm up and the bottoms soften a little bit, but that fudgy center is still there.
This is a no chill recipe, but the cookies don’t spread because we start with cold butter. Yes. Cold butter. It takes a bit more effort to mix, but the resulting dough feels like it’s been chilled for an hour giving it the firmness needed to keep their shape.
What You’ll Need
- Cold butter – Yes, cold. I’ll dig into the why a bit more further down.
- Brown sugar – Dark or light brown brown sugar will work, dark will have a richer flavor. The acidic properties of the brown sugar activate the baking soda.
- Granulated white sugar – Granulated sugar or superfine white sugar will do.
- Eggs – Binds the dough together and makes a creamier dough, which helps keep your cookies soft and moist.
- Vanilla extract – I like the real stuff, imitation works too.
- All purpose flour – I prefer the unbleached kind, but it’s not required.
- Dutch-processed cocoa powder – Unsweetened cocoa powder with a milder flavor and lower acidity than natural cocoa powder.
- Baking soda – The chemical leavener that helps the cookies lift without spreading too far.
- Salt – A little bit of salt makes sweets taste sweeter without adding more sugar.
- Semi-sweet chocolate chips – The second chocolate in our double chocolate cookies.
- Kosher salt or flaky sea salt – For sprinkling on top to give your cookies the ultimate chocolatey flavor. (Kosher is in the photos, but I actually prefer sea salt.)
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- stand mixer with paddle attachment
- measuring cups
- measuring spoons
- silicone spatula
- 2 tablespoon cookie scoop
- parchment paper
- baking sheets
- cooling rack
- metal spatula
How to Make Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
These cookies need very little advance planning because we make them with cold butter, so there is no need to set your butter out in advance. Everything mixes in a single bowl, but I like to crack the eggs separately before adding them in, just in case I drop a shell or find a bad egg. Once mixed they go straight in the oven, making them a great option for when you are short on time.
- Prepare – Preheat the oven to 350º and line a cookie sheet with parchment (2 if you have them.) Grab all your tools and ingredients.
- Mix the wet ingredients – Cut your butter into chunks – the smaller they are the faster they mix. Add butter and both sugars to the bowl of a stand mixer and mix on low until crumbly. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until liquid.
- Add the dry ingredients – Add flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt to the liquid mixture. I like to sprinkle the salt and baking soda over the top instead of dropping it all in one spot. Mix on low until combined into a thick, stiff dough. It should resemble a chilled cookie dough texture.
- Make the cookies – Use a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop to scoop your cookies. You can drop them straight from the scoop or roll them into dough balls. Place them on your prepared cookie sheet, about 2 inches apart. I can fit 12 onto a standard, half sized cookie sheet.
- Add chocolate chip cookies – Gently press 6 – 7 chocolate chips into the top of each cookie. (A great job for little hands and kids learning to count!) Sprinkle with salt, if using.
- Bake – Bake the cookies in your preheated oven, 8 minutes for gooey fudgy centers or 10 minutes for fudgy cakey centers.
- Cool – Allow the cookies to cool about 2 minutes on the baking sheet then transfer baked cookies to a wire rack to cool completely. (This step preserves their crispy bottoms.)
Making Cookie Dough with Cold Butter
When I first tried making cookies with cold butter my baking instincts went a little crazy. Making cookies without first softening the butter went against all of my previous experience. But, I tried it anyway and I’m so glad I did.
We all know that chilling the cookie dough between mixing it and baking it is what helps the cookies to keep their shape and prevent spreading out. Specifically, the cold centers allow the outsides of the cookies to bake before the insides are warm enough to spread.
Using cold butter and working quickly, allows the end result to closely resemble what the dough would look like if you softened it, mixed it, then chilled it. So we aren’t just saving time by not warming our butter to room temperature, we are also saving time by not having to chill the cookies before we bake them. That is a time saving win-win.
One thing to note, it’s very difficult to make these or any cold butter cookies without some mechanical help, in the form of a stand mixer or hand mixer. I used a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Based on my experience with making rough puff pastry I would imagine that a food processor would work too, but I haven’t yet tried it.
If you don’t have a any of these tools, you can make these cookies in a more traditional way. Let your butter come to room temp and mix your dough as instructed. Shape your cookies and add the chips, then chill them for 30 minutes so that they firm up before baking. It won’t save you the time, but it will get you yummy chocolate cookies.
Tips for Success
Here are a few important things to remember when making these cookies.
- Use the parchment – It will save you clean up time, keep your cookies from sticking, and it’s biodegradable.
- Don’t overmix the butter and sugars – Many cookie recipes call for creaming the butter, which adds air to the dough. We don’t want that. We are aiming for a fudgy cookie here and adding air to the mix will cause them to be more cakelike. It will also
- Leave space between your cookies – Space gives them room to expand slightly and it gives you room to slip a spatula under them while transferring them to the cooling rack.
Note on Baking: The recipe makes about 24 cookies. If you are only baking one sheet of cookies at a time, bake it in the center of the oven and place the remaining shaped cookies in the fridge to keep the dough cold while the first batch bakes. Let the fridge cookies sit out for about 2 minutes before placing them in the oven.
Alternatively, you can set your racks high and low in the oven and bake two sheets at once. If baking two sheets, be sure to rotate your cookies top to bottom and front to back halfway through the cooking time.
Recipe Variations
Baking is a science, which makes it more difficult to throw in substitutions without completely altering the chemical structure of your recipe. However, here are a couple of things you can try and still expect success.
- Mix up your chips! – The recipe calls for semi-sweet chips, but that is one thing you can freely change with confidence. Beyond milk chocolate or white chocolate, try butterscotch or peanut butter chips, or do a blend of multiple kinds of chips.
- Add fancy salts – There are lots of specialty salts available these days, get creative in changing up the flavors of these cookies. Merlot infused salt, ginger salt, garam masala salt, or a spicy chipotle salt would all compliment the chocolate in these cookies and give them an added pop of flavor.
Serving Suggestions
These cookies are great on their own, but they also make a great dessert when served with ice cream. I’m partial to blueberry ice cream, but any ice cream that goes with chocolate would go with these cookies. Cherry ice cream, blackberry ice cream, coffee ice cream, and caramel ice cream are all solid choices, but you could also choose a classic vanilla too.
Add these cookies to your holiday cookie plates or wrap them up and share them at a Christmas cookie swap. You really can’t go wrong with a fudgy chocolate cookie.
How to Store and Reheat
These cookies keep well in an airtight container on the counter for about 5 days before they start to go stale. I keep mine in clean, reusable take out containers.
If you won’t eat all of them in that amount of time, toss them in the freezer where they will keep for about 3 months. You can bring out just what you need and expect that they will thaw on the counter in about 30 minutes or toss them in an oven or airfryer to warm them back up.
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Double Chocolate Chip Cookies | No Chill Recipe
Ingredients
- ½ cup cold unsalted butter
- ½ cup light brown sugar
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 ½ cups all purpose flour
- ½ cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- ½ cup chocolate chips
- 1-2 tablespoons of Kosher or flaky sea salt for sprinkling (optional)
Instructions
- Set an oven rack to the center position, then preheat your oven to 350 F. Line a cookie sheet (2 if you have them) with parchment paper.
- Cut your cold butter into cubes & then place in a medium mixing bowl along with the light brown sugar and granulated sugar.
- Start on low speed and increase to medium speed until all of the butter & sugar have thoroughly been combined.
- Add in the eggs & vanilla extract to the bowl, mix on medium low until combined.
- Add in the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, & salt. Mix on the lowest speed until combined. You will get a thick dough and it may look like you need more liquid, but don’t add any!
- Using a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop, scoop the cookie dough onto your cookie sheet leaving about 2” between each scoop.
- Press 6 – 7 chocolate chips into the tops of each cookie & sprinkle lightly with salt if using.
- Place one sheet of cookies in the fridge to hold while the first batch bakes. Place the other batch on the center rack of the hot oven.
- Bake 8 minutes for gooey fudgy cookies or 10 minutes for cakelike fudgy cookies. Let cool on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.
- Bake the second sheet of cookies the same as the first.
- Enjoy with a glass of milk or by themselves!
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Notes
- The chocolate chips can be mixed in during the last step instead of being added on top, if you choose.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated and is for general information purposes only. For the most accurate information, calculate using your select brands and exact measurements.
