The Best Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

As much as we love a soft chewy cookie there are time when we crave the crunch. This is a recipe for a deliciously sweet crunchy chocolate chip cookie.

How to get that crunch

After quite a lot of trial and errors I think I have found the right way to get the crunch.

First lets take a look at the ingredients:

Sugar, for a soft chewy cookie you will want to go with a brown sugar. Because of the molasses content it will add more moisture thus creating more of a chewy caramel style of cookie. Whereas white sugar will make a crispier cookie.

Butter, melting butter can create crispy cookies but it will also lead to a flatter chewier cookie. Using un-melted butter may add more air but it will keep the cookies from falling flat.

Baking soda, while baking powder add more of a leavening agent, leading to a cakier cookie. Baking soda while similar acts in a different way. It allows the ingredients to bind together while they bake but it does so in a delayed way. That delay gives the cookie time to spread out. I found this post from biggerbolderbaking.com she really goes into the science behind baking soda it is worth checking out.

Next lets look at the bake.

This I think is more important than any of the ingredients. The key is low and slow. again cookies usually are baked at around 350 degrees. These crunchier cookies are baked at 300 degrees that is quite a difference.

The science behind baking is something that I am learning every day and it never fails to amaze me. Learning about each ingredient and how heat and time affects them will enable us to create some amazing things in our kitchens.

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What you need to make crunchy chocolate chip cookies

Ingredients

• All purpose flour, this is a plain white flour. It tends to be the most popular.
• Butter, I used to always use unsalted but have changed to salted recently. Honestly I interchange them quite often, when I do I will add a little more salt if I have chosen unsalted.
• White Sugar, most of my cookie recipes will use a brown sugar along side the white but to get the crunch you need to stick to just the white.
• Egg, a large sized egg.
• Vanilla Extract.
• Baking soda, also known as bicarbonate of soda.
• Chocolate chips. I love milk chocolate chips but you can also use semi sweet or dark. I think this is down to personal preference.

Tools

• Mixing bowl
• Electric beater or a stand mixer if you have one. Use the paddle attachment if you do.
• Kitchen scale or measuring cups. I prefer to weigh my ingredients when I bake I find it is a lot more accurate.
• Measuring spoons
• Lined cookie sheets, they can be lined with silicone mats or parchment paper

How to make Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies

To begin you will want to cream the butter and sugar together. The butter for this recipe does not need to be melted but it will need to be close to room temperature. The easiest way to do this will be with an electric beater because it does take a little bit of effort to do.

Once the butter and sugar have come together and look light and fluffy. Add in the egg and vanilla extract and mix them in really well. They should be fully incorporated before moving on to the next step.

Next we move onto the dry ingredients. I know it is a bit of a pain adding a step but I do find it is worth it. Mix the flour, baking soda and salt together before adding them to the other ingredients. This will blend the baking soda throughout the flour a little more evenly.

Add these dry ingredients to the bowl and begin to mix them together. Just as you see the dry ingredients being absorbed in and when it is still looking crumbly add in the chocolate chips.

Keep mixing the cookie dough until it cools together to form a rough looking ball.

Now we need to refrigerate the cookie dough so cover the bowl and place it into the fridge for at least an hour. You can store it there for up to a day. I have done this before and made the cookies in batches.

Baking and enjoy

After you have chilled the dough now comes the baking so preheat the oven to 300 Fahrenheit if you have a convection oven then I would reduce this by ten degrees.

Take the cookie dough and break off pieces and form them into balls roughly the size of golf balls. Place these onto the lined cookie sheet, they do not need to be flattened out.

Once the oven has come to temperature place the cookies in to bake. They need to bake for 30 -35 minutes.

Remove the cookies from the oven and leave them to cool completely. As the cookies cool they will firm up and get crunchier. In fact these cookies will get crunchier the longer you leave them.

These crunchy chocolate chip cookies actually taste the best a day or two after they are baked. This is unlike softer chewier cookies that tend to be the best right from the oven.