Chips ahoy makes a chewy chocolate chip cookie that is soft and chewy and not crunchy or hard at all. I like this style cookie a lot and would like to bake some at home. Does anyone know what they add to this cookie to prevent it from getting hard when you bake it?
I don’t know the exact method that Chips Ahoy uses, but under-cooking them a little and using brown sugar seems to keep them chewy longer.
As the main difference between brown and white sugar is molasses, you can experiment with adding some molasses to your recipe.
This might help:
Nice article, that looks really helpful.
In the case of Chip’s Ahoy, the greatly increased the corn syrup ratio in the chewy cookie is the likely culprit. As noted by @What_Exit and @susan, there are multiple things at play, but your best bet is to find a soft and chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe and follow it to a T. It will likely be a combination of brown sugar, underworking the dough, undercooking the cookie, specific leavening ratios, other ingredient ratios, and perhaps even ingredients such as the aforementioned corn syrup that makes each recipe work.
Everything that has been said here, plus one that hasn’t been explicitly mentioned - moisture. Store-bought cookies like the ones you mentioned are packed with various tools (even simple ones like more salt than you’d ever see in home-made) which enhances the ability to retain and even absorb moisture. Then they’re packed in airtight packaging, so moisture lost in transit (if any) is generally re-absorbed.
That’s one of the reasons you’ll see mentions in home-made cookies to add a slice of untoasted bread to the bag, the moisture lost by the bread will help keep the cookies moister and thus more chewy. But the corn syrup is a ‘help’ as is the high melting point fats they add. In fact, any cookie with a higher than usual fat content is going to be more chewy, so egg-rich (and/or yolk rich), high butter ratios will get the job done.
The gingerbread cookie recipe I use makes soft bready delicious gingery cookies. It does indeed use molasses, AND uses honey, both of which add moisture, and when you add the flour to the batter, you stop adding when it hits the texture that’s just enough more solid than liquid to enable you to work with it, roll it and shape it.
It really helps to refrigerate the cookie dough for at least overnight or even 24 hours before making the cookies. This allows moisture to absorb completely. You usually end up with a cookie with a crispy edge and a soft center. I make these oatmeal-walnut cookies often, and they’re always moist:
Oatmeal-Walnut Cookies
Dry ingredients (whisk together in a large mixing bowl):
2 cups all-purpose or baking flour (240 grams)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt
1 heaping tsp of Baking Spice (Penzeys: www.penzeys.com)
½ tsp Vietnamese cinnamon (same source)
OR substitute your own mix of cinnamon, cardamom, anise, nutmeg or cloves
Wet ingredients:
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar (198 g)
1 cup brown sugar (dark or light) 200g
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla (not imitation)
Cream the wet ingredients with a hand mixer until light. By hand or stand mixer, mix the wet and dry ingredients until just well combined. It’s important not to overwork it.
Add the following:
3 cups oats (not instant) 270g
1 cup golden raisins, or ½ cup raisins and ½ cup diced dried apricots (or substitute other dried fruit, if desired)
1 cup walnut pieces
When all have been combined, cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate it, making sure the plastic is touching the surface of the dough. The dough can be refrigerated overnight or up to 36 hours. Or just bake right away. Refrigeration helps the moisture to be absorbed by the flour and oats, and can improve texture.
Heat oven to 350F. If refrigerated, allow dough to come to room temperature. Using a spoon or a cookie/ice cream scoop, form the dough into 2” diameter balls, taking care not to compress the dough too much. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet or on parchment paper on a sheet, allowing enough room for expansion (about nine cookies per sheet). Bake for 10-13 minutes, or until golden. It’s important not to overcook these.
After the cooking cycle, you will see moisture in the cookie cracks or even puddled ingredients in the middle. This is good. Remove from the oven and let sit on the sheet for about two minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool. Store as you normally would.
I have a similar recipe for chocolate chip cookies, although it calls for chocolate discs, not chips. Decadent.
Thanks. I read the op, and thought, “that’s exactly the opposite of what i like”, but i suspected that the same information would be useful either way.
Do you mean if you follow this recipe the edges are crispy, or are not crispy? Because I am trying to make it so the edges are not crispy at all. I want the cookie to be completely soft in all areas not have any crispy areas at all to it.
Just the process of baking is going to cause browning, which means there is an element of crunch or crisp. The oatmeal cookies above are not excessively so, and if you cook them for less time, they’ll be fairly gooey.
Alton Brown has a great recipe that uses bread flour and more brown sugar.
That’s a great article! There does seem to be one problem, however:
Ooey-gooey: Add 2 cups more flour.
to the regular Nestlé Tollhouse Cookie recipe. But the Tollhouse recipe calls for 2 1/4 C. flour, so you’d be almost doubling the flour. Wouldn’t this result in dry crumbles, not dough? There must be a typo or something.
The rest of the article is very helpful, though!
The rest of the article looks very helpful. I’ll be referring back to it.
My recipe calls for this also. I didn’t realize this contributes to soft chewy bready cookies! (New at this baking thing!)
Alton Brown devoted an episode of Good Eats to this topic: brown sugar vs white sugar, butter vs shortening…the science behind each choice and the effect it has on the cookie.
The Chewy is Alton Brown’s recipe hack for perfectly soft, gooey, and cake-like chocolate chip cookies — just like Toll House, but better.
But isn’t there an important difference between chewy and cake-like? Who ever had a chewy cake? I would be suspicious of a recipe with a description like that – I might try it, but I would also be prepared to tweak it as needed.
I’m not sure if this has been mentioned, but the size of the cookie (i.e. the amount of cookie dough per cookie) is important. A larger cookie will need to cook longer, and so it is more likely the edges will get at least a little crispy. So if you want non-crispy, chewy cookies, one trick is to make smaller cookies.
A couple of points - my wife often uses the Alton Brown ‘chewy’ variant, and I agree, it does feel more ‘cake like’ than a true chewy cookie. Part of that is though a technique she uses to prevent over-spreading while baking, in that she bakes the cookies inside a largish size muffin tin! When you do this, your cookies tend to bake up, looking a bit more like undersized hockey pucks. This prevents overspreading and overcooked/overcrispy edges, but I’d advise using less dough per cookie than my wife does, which should get you the protection from overspreading, but without the excess vertical height.
After reviewing America’s Test Kitchen cookie recipes, here are a few other tips: instead of creaming the solid butter with the sugar, use 1/2 vegetable oil and 1/2 melted and browned butter (incorporates less air, making a denser, chewier cookie); instead of two whole eggs use one egg plus one yolk (egg whites make a cookie more cake-like); and make your brown to white sugar ratio 2:1 (makes the cookie softer and more chewy).
I buy Tollhouse break and bake.
Once they start to go hard, I’ll pop it in the microwave for about 10 to 15 seconds and it tastes like it came right out of the oven again
I reheat one cookie at a time for best results.
I actually just use the off-the-wrapper Nestle Tollhouse recipe, and they come out perfectly chewey and not crispy. Non of this new-fangled stuff.
And don’t overcook them. I use less time than specified, but that might be my oven.