The Best Bakery-Style Chocolate Chip Cookies (Egg-Free, Dairy-Free!) 🍪

Every person needs to have a knock-it-out-of-the-park chocolate chip cookie recipe in their arsenal, and this is that cookie recipe. We've tested dozens of variations in the quest to find the perfect cookie, and to me this is how cookies should be. It's crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. And in addition to showing you how to make the cookies, I thought it would also be fun to just dive into the science of why certain ingredients or certain steps are used so that you can understand baking a little bit better. So let's get started. Now a good cookie recipe uses butter. We've got some unsalted vegan butter here, but we're going to level this up by browning it. This is the secret step that really sets these cookies apart. So we're going to start with adding this butter to a saucepan. Let it melt down. Eventually you're going to see it starts to foam. This is normal. We're just going to keep cooking it until the butter turns brown. So you're going to know it's done when you see these grainy solids at the bottom of the pan. The butter is going to be a bit brown, clear, and it's going to have this nutty aroma. So for now, we're going to set this to the side. We don't want to add it in too soon because it's going to melt the chocolate. Now for a quick comparison, we tried this recipe with coconut oil and another one with just regular butter that isn't browned. Now visually they look similar, but on the tongue, the one made with coconut oil is kind of greasy and it lacks flavor. And the one that's using just regular butter, it also lacks that depth and complexity of flavor, but it's all right. Just tastes like, you know, your typical chocolate chip cookies. All right, next, let's grab a bowl. We're going to add to it both brown sugar and granulated sugar. So you might be wondering why two different kinds of sugar? Why not just one? Well, it's a strategic choice. Brown sugar gives a caramel-like flavor, so that's lovely, but it also has molasses in it and that adds moisture. So the cookies are going to have more of this like soft and chewy center. And then the granulated sugar, that helps to crisp and harden up the outside. So it has a lovely crunch and that's because of the way that the sugar crystallizes. All right, next, we're going to add in some milk and then lastly vanilla extract. And we can now pour the slightly cooled brown butter over everything and mix it all together. Look at that beautiful golden color. Next, we're going to measure out our flour, but a little bit of background first. I grew up in Canada and I feel like in North America in general, we're taught to bake with cups and tablespoon measures. And it wasn't until I moved to Europe that I learned everyone here weighs their ingredients using a kitchen scale. So first, for my North American friends, if you're going to be using cup measurements, just be careful not to scoop the flour directly with your measuring cup. This is going to pack it down too much and then we're going to be adding too much flour. So instead, what you want to do is just gently spoon the flour into the cup and then level it off. That being said, the best method for accuracy is always to use a kitchen scale if you can. Baking is a science and precision really matters. So the Europeans know what's up. But either way, we have both metric and imperial units of measure on our website for this recipe. So now we're going to sift the flour into the bowl. We're also going to add some baking powder, baking soda, and salt. We're going to stir these dry ingredients into the wet until it's partly combined but not completely. And then finally, for the star of the show, we're going to chop up some dark chocolate into big satisfying chunks. I always prefer to chop my own chocolate because it just creates these irresistible melty pools of chocolate, whereas chocolate chips, in my opinion, they tend to hold their shape. But those work too if you prefer. We can then add these chocolate chunks to our bowl and stir until it's just combined, but make sure not to overmix. Now we're going to chill our dough for exactly one hour. And just as a little experiment, we also baked some of these cookies without first refrigerating it just to see what would happen. And I think when you take a look, you'll see what went wrong. They obviously spread too much. This is like a pancake cookie. So why we refrigerate is it helps to solidify the fat and that's going to help prevent spreading excessive spreading during baking. When the dough is finished cooling, we can start to make our cookies. I like to use an ice cream scooper for this just because it creates uniform little cookies, but otherwise you can just like scoop up about two tablespoons worth and roll it into a ball. And then we're going to place them on a lined baking tray. Just leave about five centimeters or so between each cookie because they do spread. And then for a bakery style look, I like to just put one or two chocolate chunks on top of each cookie. All right, now we can bake these one tray at a time on the middle rack of the oven. It's been preheated to 350 Fahrenheit or 180 Celsius and we're going to bake it for 13 to 14 minutes or until they're golden. It's also worth mentioning that our oven is top and bottom heating only, so not fan assisted. If you've got a fan on, it's going to overcook the cookies. When cookies come out of the oven, they tend to spread unevenly and that's totally okay. But if you're going for a bakery style look, a little hack is to grab a cup and then just place it upside down over top of the cookie and give it a little shimmy. It's going to shape the cookies into perfect circles that are all uniform in size. Pretty cool, right? And while the chocolate is still melted, I also like to sprinkle a little bit of flaky sea salt on top just to help boost that flavor. And now we're going to let the cookies cool on the tray for a few minutes before we move them over to a wire rack to finish cooling. And there you have it folks, the best bakery style chocolate chip cookies. Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside with a lovely complex flavor from browning the butter and of course those pools of melted chocolate. Oh, it's so good. Perfect. Thank you. The full recipe for this is on our website. The link is in the description box below. And if you're hungry for even more cookie recipes, more baked goods, more wholesome meals, we have a Pick Up Limes app. If you want to check it out, you can get seven days for free. I'll leave a QR code for you right here and there's also a link in the description box below. And thanks for baking with me today, friends. I really appreciate it. I hope you love these cookies. Pick Up Limes signing off and I'll see you in the next video.