Use unsalted butter (real butter): make the Nestle Toll House Cookie recipe; When they're melted a bit but are still a bit puffed up (a couple of minutes before they're done), take the cookies out of the oven and drop the sheet on the counter as flat as you can to make the cookies "drop" (lose the puff). Put them back in the oven for the last couple of minutes. This last step will give you chewy cookies.

Good tip, Tibb.

If you don't bake often, check the expiry date on your baking soda & baking powder. Otherwise you end up with flat discs :-(

Cookies using butter will be a bit crispier. Recipes with shortening stay softer.

I'm not sure where I read it, but the dough improves if you refrigerate it for 24 hours. I never bake mine all at once, and I think they are better after a day or two.

I always put a little extra salt in too. Baked goods need adequate salt.

One day many years ago, making chocolate chip cookies with the best cook I've ever known, she showed me her two secrets: 1. add just one tablespoon of strong brewed coffee to the batter (the coffee kicks up the flavor of the chocolate in a noticeable way, but you never taste the coffee); and 2. use an equal mixture of walnuts and pecans (never just one type of nut by itself). She was famous for those cookies!!

I always take them out of the oven a minute or so before the suggested time. This keeps them from getting crisp.

I like the idea of adding 1T of strong coffee to the batter.

If you use coconut oil instead of shortening, it has a hint of coconut flavor!

I don't care for nuts, so I use oatmeal in it's place.

Butter: Recipes that matter state salted/unsalted explicitly. Butter/shortening changes the color and if they bake flat or mounded. Baking soda/power: always shake container before using, rising elements settle over time. ALWAYS substitute strong coffee in any chocolate recipe if water is called for. I prefer the classic toll house recipe. I think the biggest difference is the brown sugar, but as the neighbor above demonstrates everyone has their own preferences.

Measure your flour carefully and fluff it first, or better yet, weigh it. Put the dough in the fridge overnight or longer before baking - it helps the sugars combine and develop more flavor. Use parchment paper instead of baking right on the pan. For softer, chewier cookies, cool on brown Kraft paper. My favorite cookies are NY Times and Alton Brown. There are lots of great articles about the various methods of making cookies and which recipes produce which results on Smitten Kitchen, Sally's Baking Addiction and King Arthur Flour.

I know several recipes for chocolate confections suggest adding coffee, but, as one who detests coffee, I can taste it in baked chocolate goods. YMMV.

I'll second the use of parchment paper. You'll never burn the bottoms again. They come out perfect.

Yes, definitely use parchment paper.

I make really good chocolate chip cookies. I prefer a chewier cookie, one that doesn't spread out too much. I always use salted butter in all my baking because I think it has a better flavor, so I adjust the salt accordingly. I do mix quite a bit in my stand mixer, letting butter and brown sugar go for up to 5 minutes. I use a whole egg plus one yolk (rather than two eggs).

Key for me is to roll the dough in a log, cover with plastic wrap and stick in the fridge till completely chilled and hard, up to 24 hours. Then I put knobs of dough straight on cookie sheets, no greasing or parchment paper because they never stick or burn, and bake till just done. I don't remove them from the cookie sheets until they're completely cooled.

Use a good choc chip. I prefer Ghirardelli. Nestle tastes awful in comparison.

I've tried a lot of chocolate chip cookies recipes now. My aunt rattled off this one to me as I was approaching an end of a bazillion new oven tests. It's my favorite, hands down. I always get consistently attractive cookies. I prefer chewy, not flat cookies. I use soft, salted butter and still add the salt in the recipe. As said above, parchment is your friend. I also don't use any dark baking sheets. Yes, to Ghirardelli!

2 eggs

1 c butter (softened)

1 c sugar

3/4 c brown sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla

1/2 tsp. salt

3 1/2 c flour

1 tsp. baking soda

wet first, add dry, add chocolate chips (I don't like a ton of chocolate in mine.)

bake 350 degrees on parchment. My oven takes about 11 min.

I find that all butter can make choc. chip cookies too cake-y for my taste. I generally use half butter & half veg. or olive oil for a crisper cooky.

I also like to add nuts & raisins.

Tib, I had to search for more info on the counter tip and was surprised at how many people recommend doing that. I had never heard of it. Thanks for sharing!

Use a good quality of butter. I prefer Plugura or Kerrygold.

Ok, so I'll be booed for this but always always save the bowl for eating the raw dough!!

No booing here. I'm too chicken to eat raw dough, but DH can't help but eat some if I don't get the bowl in the sink quick enough. Today, he cleaned the mixing paddle as soon as I put peanut butter chocolate chip cookies in the oven ;-)

If you want thicker, chewer cookies, refrigerate the dough. It will set up in the oven before it has a chance to spread out too much and get thin.

Booed? Chicken? I live for raw cookie dough (where is Christine?). The nice thing about my method of forming a log and chilling in fridge for up to 24 hours, one may slice off a piece now and then for deliciousness.

If you use the original Toll House recipe, use more flour and the cookies will not be flat. I add flour until the dough is not sticky ... about 1/2 to 3/4 cup more.

Raw dough is the best part of cookies. I've been eating it for 30+ years and I'm alive.

When I was in law school, I would make a bowl of the raw dough and just keep it in the fridge and eat it all week. My boyfriend at the time called it my "bacteria bowl" and I did not care b/c that just meant more for me!

leave the eggs out, and eat the dough raw with grandkids...haha!

It's not just the eggs, it could also be the flour that's a worry. There was a recall of flour in May(?) because of E. coli. But go on with your bad self if that's what you like. May the odds be ever in your favor.

Bacteria bowl! Too funny ;-)

Beagles, that's it exactly. I've been a baker since I was about 5 years old, and the real motivation was to eat raw dough and batter. My brother and would fight over the cake batter bowl and we'd have to draw a line down the middle. We lived to tell the tale and eat another glob of dough.

But go on with your bad self if that's what you like. May the odds be ever in your favor.

^^^^^^

And here we go, off the Crisco-greased rails.

I don't think anyone will ever agree on what makes the perfect chocolate chip cookies since some like them crisp, some chewy, etc. Several years ago, for the science fair, my dd's project was examining the effects of using different fats in chocolate chip cookies to see how they affect shape, size and taste. She did three experiments, one using all butter, one using all margarine, and one using 1/2 butter, 1/2 shortening. I can't remember the results exactly, but she also did a taste test with all of our neighbors. Those subjective results were all over the map as to which were the favorite, but the 1/2 butter, 1/2 shortening won out. The butter gave them the best flavor, but the shortening made them chewy yet a little crisp/crunchy around the edges. That said, I use all butter and the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag usually.

However, after one of my kids was born, my sister made me chocolate chip cookies and sent them to me in a nicely decorated package. They were fabulous and looked like they were from a bakery. I asked her for the recipe and turns out, she used a Cooks Illustrated recipe. I've made them a couple of times but not in many years. I found this recipe online and I'm guessing it's the right one, but I definitely remember the trick for getting the right texture on top was pulling them apart, then rotating the torn edges upward before pressing the two pieces together. It definitely worked! Cooks Illustrated Chocolate Chip Recipe

4kids, I tried this recipe and several like it. The one I use is quite similar except mine has a tsp. of molasses.

I did find a strange problem with the melted butter method. First the butter was melted and allowed to start to brown, the theory being that it lends a nutty taste to the cookies. I didn't find the taste to be that different or improved. But the strange problem: When I'd mix the chocolate chips in at the end, they would resist being incorporated into the dough. It was like they were made of Teflon and repelled and would pop to the surface. Yes, the butter was cooled. I even tried first dredging the chips with flour, but still this oddness. I stopped with the melted butter, an extra step + time that wasn't giving me anything but annoyance.

For awhile I did butter+Crisco, but a lot of flavor is lost.

ETA: I do like the way the top looks on 4kids' recipe. I may have to try that method.

Now I am seriously jonesing for cookie dough.

I know, Linelle, I just gave up sugar today for a bit while I get my weight back on track after too much eating and not enough exercising this summer. I've only made the Cooks Ilustrated recipe a couple of times and it was so long ago that I don't even remember melting the butter.

I'm weird in that I like the dough without chocolate chip cookies, ,or at least, only a few of them. When we make choc chip cookies, I always love the last one scooped from the bowl b/c typically it's mostly dough and only one or two chips. I save that cookie for myself. And I'm another raw dough eater....and prefer it w/o chips also. I've always been a plain Jane though - I prefer vanilla ice cream to anything other flavor, but do sometimes enjoy something mixed in, like a swirl of caramel or crushed oreos.

4kids, I'm the same with preferring the plain dough. I love chocolate, but not too many chips or else it's too rich. It helps to use Ghirardelli bitter-sweet chips, instead of semi-sweet.

I'm very picky about my choc. chip cookies. They have to be soft and chewy, with a tad bit of crispness around the edges.

After years of baking TH cookies I finally discovered how to make a good cookie. Temperatures regarding eggs, butter, kitchen, and dough is what matters.

Salted butter along with the salt in the recipe. With all that sugar you can't even tell a difference.

I use cold eggs, unless it's winter then I set them out for about 10 min.

Soft butter, but if it's summer, do not use room temperature butter. That will make the cookies turn out like pancakes, unless you put the dough in the fridge for just a bit.

Do not use any type of beater or you'll get flat cookies. If you mix the wet ingredients first, then add the dry, there is no need for a mixer. Unless you just love cleaning and used cold butter. You only need one bowl too.

If the dough is too soft, put it in fridge until it cools a bit. That keeps them from spreading out.

Bake them until barely brown (where you have to look hard for the brown) on top, because they keep cooking after you take them out. If you leave them in until slightly brown, they'll be too crisp.

Let sit for 2 minutes in the pan on a cooling rack. Lift the whole sheet of paper with cookies and transfer to another cooling rack. No need to take cookies off the paper while they cool.

If you need cookies in a jiffy and don't have time to do them from scratch? Buy Toll House ready made dough and they are just like homemade, until the next day when they start to fall apart. :)

I discovered that the best way to eat choc chip cookies is when they're frozen. Let them thaw for 15-30 seconds. They are so much chewier!

I still haven't made the cookies yet. Maybe this weekend. Lots of good tips, thanks. I don't like a ton of chips in the cookie either.

One more tip--if you like cookies to be soft store them in a plastic container with a slice of white bread. This will keep cookies soft and if you have cookies that have hardened this trick will soften them.

Walnuts in the bread, but not necessarily in the cookies.

Saltine, I thought I was the only one who knew that trick. lol We love a softer cookie. Nicer for 'dunking' since it holds the milk. ;)

I finally got going on the cookies. I went ahead with the Toll House recipe with a little extra flour. I don't have parchment paper so I'll use foil on a cookie sheet. I mixed the butter/sugar by hand, no mixer...let the butter get soft by leaving it out. Now everything is mixed up and the dough is in the fridge before I cook my first batch. ETA: I ended up using unsalted butter and used 1 tsp of salt as the recipe called for.

The cookies taste great but they came out flat. They spread out, rose a little but went flat. I baked a batch after chilling dough in the fridge the first night and then I baked a batch after the dough was in the fridge over night and a day. I'll bake the rest of the dough today.

I have had the best luck when I drop the cookie dough onto the cookie sheet at a truly uniform size so the cookies baked in the same amount of time. In an older oven, I used to have to turn the cookie sheets halfway through or nothing came out even. I really love silicone baking sheets nothing sticks to them.

Try 4kids4us' tip:

Roll a scant ¼ cup of dough into a ball. Holding the ball in both hands, pull ball apart into 2 equal halves. Rotate just 90 degrees so jagged edges face up and press the two pieces back together again. Place on baking sheet with jagged edges facing up, spacing 2½ inches apart.

I must be the only goof who misread the title of this & thought you were asking how much to tip someone for making you the cookies! Had me puzzled but since my chocolate chip cookies always came out flat, I'd tip someone to make them for me.

I had forgotten about the tip to pull the ball apart and rotate the top. I did that several times when I first read about it and it worked great.

Always1step, what kind of butter did you use? I was just reading on the King Arthur blog about which butters to use for baking. They recommend an 80% fat content butter, their preferred is Cabot. Land O'Lakes and Costco were brought up in the comments of the article as being comparable. King Arthur opinion is that European butters like Plugra and Kerrygold, with their higher fat content, may not produce the desired results. A light bulb went off in my head at that, as I recently made scones and they spread all over the place - and I had used Kerrygold. Usually I use Costco organic or Land O'Lakes for baking and have good results.

King Arthur: Which Butter to Use for Baking

Yes to Costco butter!!!

I used Challenge Butter...probably because it was cheaper :-/

I looked up Challenge butter because I haven't seen it before. It appears to have the right fat content for cookies, if you follow King Arthur Flour's suggestion to get 80% or so fat content. I saw in one article that Challenge produced pretty good results for certain baked goods. Although the article was kind of old, so I don't know if they would have the same results were they to do all the same testing again.

1. Don't add salt to recipe if you're already using salted butter.

2. I usually double or even triple the amount of vanilla, or sometimes use almond extract in addition to vanilla.