Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe (2024)

Thick and decadent Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies with soft, chewy, buttery centers and slightly crispy edges, plus plenty of gooey melted chocolate chips. Make these cookies in less than 30 minutes!

Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies

These Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies are quite possibly the easiest cookie recipe on this site, and they look and taste like bakery quality. You can whip them up from start to finish (including baking time!) in less than 30 minutes.

These Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies are chewy, thick, and soft in the center with just slightly crisp edges, and of course plenty of gooey, melty chocolate chips. The buttery, sweet vanilla cookies are the perfect base for those rich, indulgent chocolate chips.

They're simple to make with no need to chill, and they can even be made ahead and frozen!

Do I Have to Chill My Cookie Dough?

No. In fact, if you make your cookies ahead of time and need to chill the dough, leave it out for 30 minutes to come back to room temperature before baking. Chilled dough in this recipe will leave you with undone centers and too-crispy edges.

Unchilled dough, straight from mixer to the oven, will give you the perfectly soft, chewy cookies you're dreaming of.

Bakery Trick to Make Your Cookies Look Extra Pretty

Ever wonder why actual bakery chocolate chip cookies look so much more appetizing than the ones made at home? That's because they're using this little trick to make them look extra pretty, chocolatey, and indulgent.

After scooping your cookie dough onto your baking sheet, press a few extra chocolate chips gently on top of the ball. They can be close together because they'll spread as they bake. It makes a huge difference! (For reference, you can see I didn't do this in the video, but I did for the pictures in this post. Crazy, right?!)

What Kind of Chocolate Should I Use?

For bakery quality cookies, use high quality chocolate. Generic chocolate chips are great for kids and school parties and will honestly still taste amazing. For that extra luxurious decadence, opt for higher quality chips or chunks.

As far as the sweetness, that choice is yours. I prefer the semi-sweet because I like that it counters the sweetness of the cookie itself without being quite as bitter as a dark chocolate. However, you can use dark, semi-sweet, sweet, white, or milk chocolate.

Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe Variations

I like to pretty much leave this recipe alone, as it has gone through lots of testing to make sure all ratios, times, etc. are exactly what they need to be. However, adding some extras into them? The more, the merrier!

• Baking Chips - You can use any kind of chocolate, including white, milk, semi-sweet, or dark. But you can also use other flavors of baking chips such as peanut butter, butterscotch, mint, toffee, or cinnamon!
• Nuts - Add ½ cup of chopped nuts such as pecans or walnuts. Or get creative with your cookie nuts and add some chopped peanuts, macadamias, or pistachios.
• Dried Fruit - Add a little fruity freshness with dried cherries, cranberries, or blueberries.
• Pretzels - Add some crunch saltiness with pieces of chopped pretzels, like in these pretzel toffee cookies with the same cookie base.
• Sprinkles - Add some festive color and fun! Mix some sprinkles right into the dough or sprinkle some on top just before baking.
• Flaky Salt - If you love that salty-sweet combo, sprinkle a little bit of flaky sea salt on these cookies just after baking.

More Cookie Recipes You'll Love

• White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies - chewy cookies with white chocolate chips and buttery, rich macadamia nuts.
• Soft Oatmeal Raisin Cookies - soft and chewy with a light hint of cinnamon, these oatmeal raisin cookies will win your heart.
• Gingersnaps - sweet, spiced cookies made with molasses and ginger with crispy edges and slightly chewy centers.
• Butterfinger Cookies - Chewy cookies with Butterfinger bits baked right in. The Butterfingers melt and caramelize as they bake, giving you the ultimate chewy cookie bites.
• Funfetti Cookies - These fun cookies are as pretty to look at as they are delicious to eat. Vanilla cookies with soft, chewy centers and rainbow sprinkles and just-right crisp edges.

Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies Video

UPDATE INFO: This post was originally published in August 2014. It was updated with new pictures, tips, and video and republished in December 2023.