Our 10 Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipes of All Time
From crispy to chewy, we've collected the best of the best.
ByFood52
Published On
Photo by Julia Gartland
It just so happens to be National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day—but honestly, isn’t that every day? A good chocolate chip cookie is everything. Heck, even a decent one can be exciting. But a great one? Life-changing.
To reach that upper echelon, a cookie needs a few key things: a chewy center, crisp (but not too crisp) edges, pockets of high-quality chocolate, and a fresh sprinkle of sea salt (we’re clutching our Maldon).
We dove into the archives and crunched the numbers to bring you the 10 best chocolate chip cookie recipes on our site—from all-time reader favorites to pro-approved picks. Here at Food52, our takes on the classic are pretty diverse.
There’s Ovenly’s vegan version from our Genius Recipes column. Grant Melton’s buttermilk riff that (legend has it) once broke the site. Dorie Greenspan’s iconic chewy cookies. A few from our Test Kitchen regulars. And most recently, a top-tier recipe from The Pastry Box, home to one of the highest-rated cookies in NYC.
Whatever your cookie style, there’s something here for you. We rounded up our top 10 below—now let’s bake.
Food52's 10 Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipes
Yes, the rumors are true: our most popular chocolate chip cookie recipe ever is ... vegan. Or at least secretly so. "This isn't just genius for a vegan chocolate chip cookie or in spite of it," Kristen Miglore once said. "This cookie, which comes from Ovenly founders Agatha Kulaga and Erin Patinkin, can rest entirely on its own merits: its soft-bellied, chewy, caramelly-crisp-edged, rippled and ringed and puddled with melty chocolate, haunting, well-salted, incidentally vegan merits."
"These newfangled chocolate chip cookies use tahini instead of butter," Recipe Developer Emma Laperruque writes. She apparently learned this method from Lisa Mendelson, one of the owners of Seed & Mill, a tahini and halva shop in New York City.
The secret ingredient in Grant's chocolate chip cookies that changed his baking game forever? Buttermilk. These "have both a slightly cakey texture with a gooey, moist center," he says, "and the touch of tang from the buttermilk is the perfect counterbalance to the incredible sweet, slightly salty dough."
Seven Spoons author Tara O’Brady has been tinkering with her chocolate chip cookie recipe since high school, so safe to say she's got a few tricks up her sleeve. This one uses melted butter (no softening required) and makes a full batch of 28 cookies.
According to recipe author Phyllis Grant, these "are deeply rooted in the Toll House tradition. But, over the years, the recipe has evolved into my own." If you love those classic cookies, this one's for you.
"I wanted a way to introduce tahini in desserts to the American palate," Danielle Oron told Kristen for her Genius Recipes column. "I figured that the best way to do that is to make a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie, but to replace the peanut butter with tahini." Sounds good to us!
This is a Dorie cookie, so you already know it's good. This one "is chewy and a bit crunchy on the edges," she writes. "That it’s got oatmeal is almost a secret—there’s not much, it’s not really visible and until the cookie’s a day old, its taste is in the background—but it’s part of what makes the chewiness so winning. I’ve kept the sugar to a minimum—less sugar means more chocolate flavor."
These are those viral, internet-famous chocolate chip cookies that call for banging the cookie sheet mid-bake so their centers deflate and ripple out. From blogger Sarah Kieffer, those wrinkles serve a very important purpose: They set the cookies' edges while still encouraging gooey centers.
It's iconic for a reason. Yes, you can buy the mix online but nothing beats a fresh batch of these. Does it take 24 hours? Yes. But is it worth it? Yes.
These cult-favorite cookies from one of NYC’s top bakeries come with a few rules: use a scale, two kinds of sugar, two kinds of chocolate, and chill the dough for at least two hours. But the real trick? Parbaking. You’ll pull them out halfway through, give them a gentle flatten, then finish baking—resulting in gooey centers, crispy edges, and those signature chocolate puddles.