With a perfectly crisp edge and just-barely-baked center, these chewy dark chocolate chip cookies have everything you could ever need in a cookie: deep chocolate flavor, an addictively chewy center, and a finishing touch of flaked sea salt to balance it all out. And the best part, it's a one bowl, three-step mix and you're ready to bake!
Jump to (scroll for more!):
Double dark chocolate...yes, please!
So I'm sure you have read this on a lot of food blogs, BUT...
I am dead serious when I say, this recipe is my FAVORITE I have ever developed.
Now, I am a self-identifying chocoholic which doesn't hurt when it comes to my love of this super easy dark chocolate chip cookie recipe, but I think what really seals the deal for me is the perfect balance...
...bitter dark chocolate and sweet sugary dough
...a chewy just-barely-baked center with a crisp caramelized edge
...a beautiful cookie crackle with a brownie-like fudgy center
...a cookie that will impress anyone and everyone, that takes one bowl, less than 5 minutes, and only 3 steps to make!
What more could you want? My answer...another batch please!
Why This Recipe Leads to Sweet Success
The secret behind these cookies, might seem like it's the rich dark chocolate or the perfect finish of sea salt, but it's actually all about the texture of our dough.
This dough is particularly thick, which allows it to hold its shape really well in the oven, even without you having to chill it (because who wants to wait an extra hour or two for their cookies?! Not this lady...).
Since these cookies stand up nice and proud even in a hot oven, you'll get a full and proper bake to set their shape and crisp that edge. But the thickness of the center will keep it at a "just-barely-baked" texture in the middle that makes these cookies oh-so-tasty and almost like a chewy brownie in a cookie disguise.
And did you know, that it get even easier than a "one bowl" recipe?!
Not only is this a one bowl cookie, but these dark chocolate chocolate chip cookies are practically a two-step recipe too. They're so easy and so tasty, that this deadly combo will have you mixing up a batch every single weekend.
If you want to make it even easier you can also bake this recipe by weight and then you don't even have to dirty measuring cups. To learn how check out my lesson series on the benefits of baking by weight and how to do it!
Ingredient Tips to Bake it Better
(Pssst…if you're ready to just get baking, get all the details in the recipe card below!)
- Unsalted butter: we're adding two rounds of salt to these cookies so be sure to use unsalted butter here so the saltiness doesn't get overwhelming.
- Sugar: using white sugar instead of brown sugar helps give you that crispy caramelized edge, and a purer chocolate flavor.
- Dutch-processed cocoa: I like using an "extra-brute" cacao for a rich, dark chocolate flavor, but any dutch cocoa will work fine (you can functionally use natural cocoa too, but I definitely prefer the flavor of dutch cocoa for this recipe).
- Vanilla extract: believe it or not, vanilla actually makes chocolate taste more chocolatey so be sure not to skip it!
- Dark chocolate chips, pistoles, or chopped chocolate: my favorite chocolate in any chip-filled cookie is a combo of Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate Chips and dark chocolate pistoles, but you can use whatever chocolate chunk size and type is your favorite!
- Flaked sea salt (for garnish): while this ingredient is optional, a few flakes of crystalized sea salt are the perfect balance to this uber-chocolatey cookie base.
(p.s. for all the basic tips that no one ever taught you, that are super important to help you bake your best, check out my Baking 101 series!)
How to Make These Cookies From Scratch
(Pssst…if you're ready to just get baking, get all the details in the recipe card below!)
- Prep your sheet pans with parchment and preheat your oven.
- Mix all ingredients together except the chocolate chips.
- Stir in the chocolate chips.
- Scoop cookies and tray them up.
- Sprinkle with sea salt, and add a decorative chip if you like.
- Bake them off, and knock the tray on the counter a few times right after taking them out of the oven.
- Cool, share and enjoy the molten chocolatey goodness!
Check out the full RECIPE WEB STORY for a click-through tutorial!
*Expert Tips and Tricks* for Better Baking
What's the TOP TIP for making tasty chocolate chip cookies?
For the sake of your arm muscles, my top tip for this recipe is to use a mixer, but do not overuse a mixer.
As a one-bowl recipe, these cookies are super easy to mix up, so it's tempting to just grab a wooden spoon and go at it. But, because we want a stiff dough to give us that chewy center, a mixer is really helpful for bringing everything together.
That said...you definitely don't want to overmix this dough, so mix just until your dough comes together, and then just until the chips are fairly well distributed to make sure your cookies stay nice and tender.
Can you make the dough ahead of time?
Yes! You can bake these delicious cookies from the fridge or freezer if you'd like to make the dough in advance. They'll still bake at 375°F for 10 minutes.
This dough will keep in the fridge for 4 days or in the freezer for up to a month. For best results, store as fully scooped dough balls with their decorative chip in (if using) so you can just drop them right on the sheet. Then just sprinkle with the sea salt right when you're ready to bake!
How do you store these cookies?
These cookies will keep for a week in an air-tight container at room temperature (although if they last that long...I'd be super impressed by your award-winning self-restraint *hehe).
What substitutions can you make?
While I'm a dark chocolate fiend, feel free to swap in milk or white chocolate chips of your favorite type, or even swap in some nuts in place of part of the chocolate chips to make this recipe your own.
You're welcome to use a combination of different chips and nuts as well, just keep the combined amount equal to 1 cup.
Other Recipes You'll Love
If you're all about the chewy cookies like me, be sure not to miss my Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chewy Sugar Cookies without Baking Powder, Birthday Cake Sugar Cookies, Oreo Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chewy Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies, and Campfire Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Cookies.
And if you're looking for a little (or a lot) more chocolate, you definitely need to mix up a batch of my Fudgy Gluten Free Brownies, Double Layer Blondie Brownies, Dark Chocolate Hot Fudge for all your sundae needs too!
⭐ If you gave this recipe a try please give it a ⭐ rating and tag me on Instagram @mint.and.mallow.kitchen so I can see what you're baking up! ⭐
📖 Full Recipe
One Bowl Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies (with sea salt!)
Ingredients
- 10 tablespoons (1 ¼ sticks) unsalted butter (softened)
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- ⅓ cup dutch-processed cocoa powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup dark chocolate chips, pistoles, or chopped chocolate*1
- Flaked sea salt*2 (for garnish)
Instructions
- Prep and line: preheat your oven to 375°F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Mix all ingredients except chips: add all the ingredients except the chocolate chips to a mixing bowl and mix by hand or with a mixer just until combined. (This is a pretty stiff dough so while it can be mixed by hand, I'd highly recommend a mixer unless you are looking for a workout as it'll take a few minutes to come together even with a mixer!)
- Add chocolate chips: add in the chocolate all at once and stir in by hand just until it’s distributed throughout the dough (you can do this using a stand mixer carefully on the lowest setting, but the dough will be too stiff for most hand mixers to work well here).
- Scoop and tray: scoop dough into rounds using a scant ¼ cup of dough per cookie (a 2" ice-cream scoop works well here for easy portioning!), and place on a prepared baking sheet at least 2” apart. For an extra hand-made touch, gently press a chocolate chip into the top of each dough ball.
- Salt and bake: if using, sprinkle a few crushed flakes of sea salt on top of each cookie. Bake for 9-11 minutes. Chocolate cookies can be tricky to check for done-ness but I recommend looking for a matte, dry surface, and edges that feel set when touch while the centers still feel just a hair under-done for a perfectly chewy texture. (Smell is also a big indicator of doneness, so as soon as you start to smell chocolate wafting through the air, you're probably close to, if not already done).
- Knock ‘em down: as soon as you take the cookies out of the oven, knock the tray firmly on the counter or hit it a few times from underneath (this helps to settle the molten batter while it’s still all gooey and give you that nice crackly look - plus it’s great stress management hehe).
- Cool, share and enjoy: cool cookies as long as you can keep away from them (which in my case is usually 5 minutes at the most as self control near warm cookies is an oxymoron in my kitchen), then pass them around and enjoy!
Test Kitchen Tips
- *1Which chocolate chips? I prefer dark chocolate chips in this recipe (I use a combo of Hershey's Special Dark Chips and 60% pistoles from Cacao Barry); the higher the quality, the better in my book, but if Nestle’s semi-sweet chips is what you grew up loving, then definitely stick with those if you like for that extra touch of nostalgia!
- *2To salt or not to salt? The sea salt flakes are optional in this recipe as they only serve as a garnish, but I highly recommend them for a perfect salt balance to the sweet chocolate cookie base.
- Baking chilled dough: if baking from the fridge or freezer, just tray up the chilled, scooped dough balls on your baking pan, sprinkle with sea salt, and bake according to regular recipe instructions.
- Storage: these cookies will keep for a week in an air-tight container at room temperature
Leah says
I have made these twice now. I sadly cannot get Dutch processed cocoa so I just use regular Hershey cocoa. But they are still great, and I use semi sweet chocolate chips because not everyone in my family.likes.dark chocolate. But again,.they are good. I found that I have to have the butter really soft and mix them super throughly and make sure to scrap the butter from the bottom up otherwise they are kind of dry and crumbly. But I think that was jaut me being in a rush and not wanting to wait for the butter to get soft enough. Really enjoy this recipe and my family and Co workers just devour them! My cookies scoop is like 1/8 cup so I get 4 dozen out of each recipe which is great!!!
Jocelyn at M+M says
I'm so glad you loved this recipe, Leah, and that it worked with the Hershey's cocoa for you! It's always great to see when bakers make the recipe their own. It's definitely a very dry dough by design which is how we keep the cookies really rich and dense and chocolatey in the middle, so you are absolutely right that having that butter extra-soft helps it come together. Also making sure you fluff and scoop your flour instead of dipping the cup in the bin can make sure you're not getting too much flour in there too. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your experience and hope these cookies continue to be a family favorite!
Ruchi Mehta says
Hi,
The recipe is very easy and cookies are very delicious. Us there any replacement for eggs.
Jocelyn at M+M says
Thank you so much for letting me know you loved this recipe, Ruchi! Unfortunately, I don't recommend using an egg substitute in any recipes designed with eggs. It'll really compromise the recipe's chemistry and make the results unpredictable which is never fun. So while you're welcome to experiment, I'd recommend checking out one of the many great blogs with recipes originally designed to be egg-free to make sure you get delicious results from the original recipe as designed. Hope that helps!
Bec says
Jocelyn,
This is my first time visiting your website. As a culinary school graduate and former food blogger, I am very familiar with the food blogging community. So, I was thrilled to see a blog show up in Google that I hadn't seen before!!
I made these cookies this afternoon, despite being out of Dutch process cocoa. They're incredibly rich, chocolaty, and chewy. Everything you could want in the perfect chocolate cookie!!
I only made one change... I creamed the butter and sugar together before adding the remaining ingredients. I think it eliminates any grittiness from the sugar crystals.
Also, your recipe card says the yield is 12 cookies using 2-tablespoon scoops. 2 tablespoons equals 1 ounce (I always weigh scoops for consistent sizes)
At that size, I was able to make 2 dozen cookies. Perfectly fine by me, because I've eaten 4 cookies myself already! 🤣
I'll be back to browse your other recipes soon. Keep up the great work! 😋
Jocelyn at M+M says
Thanks so much for sharing your experience, Bec, and I'm so happy to hear you loved the cookies! I try to keep things as simple as possible for the average home baker, but it's so great you were able to use your expertise to make them even better! This is an older recipe for me that I've been meaning to shine up for a while, so I'll be sure to check on that servings yield when I give it a refresh soon. Thanks so much for the tip, and as a fellow pastry school graduate and food blogger, I really appreciate your kind words and review. I hope you do find many more recipes to love on the site, thank you again, and happy baking!
Sarah Bronko says
I made these last night and - holy cow - so easy and absolutely delicious! I bought the only dutch processed cocoa they had at Macs Woodstock (the whole box was in Dutch!) and chopped up a Lindt dark chocolate bar - heaven! I flipped a cookie by accident when banging the first tray, but had my technique down by the second batch. Brought them in for my coworkers and they devoured them. Can’t wait to make again! 🙂
Jocelyn at M+M says
I'm sooooo happy to hear that, Sarah! These are one of my favorite cookies ever, and it sounds like you really did them justice. The knock on the counter is kind of an odd step that I know most recipes don't mention, so thanks so much for sharing your experience as I'll try to develop a little video or something I can link to in cookie posts to help people learn how/why that works. So happy you shared the love too with some delicious chocolatey treats for your co-workers, and I hope you have many more successful rounds of this recipe in the future!
Rosie says
When you said this is your favorite recipe you've developed, I knew I had to drop everything and make it right away. And I'm happy to report that it was just as easy as you promised and even BETTER tasting! I only had Nestle semisweet chips to use, but I can't wait to get some really high quality dark chocolate (can I come raid your stash?!) and make them again. This will definitely earn a spot in my baking rotation for years. Thank you for the amazing recipe!
Jocelyn at M+M says
Awww thank you so much, Rosie! I could not be more excited that you have developed a love of these cookies as much as I have, and I'm glad you have a next batch with even better chocolate in it to look forward too 🙂
...and of course you are more than welcome to raid my chocolate stash anytime you like! 😉