3 Tips For Extra Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Thick, thin, doughy, or light, there are a ton of different ways to bake a beloved batch of chocolate chip cookies. If you prefer these delights to be extra thick and chewy rather than crumbly or crisp, we asked one cookie expert for some help on how to get there. To achieve a truly dreamy, dense batch of chocolate chip cookies, we sat down with Christina Tosi, chef and founder of Milk Bar Bakery, for some advice. She says that butter is key.

Most chocolate chip cookie recipes suggest using melted butter, thanks to its ability to bring fudgy textures to desserts.Its water content dissolves once melted, leaving only its tasty fat behind. While Tosi does use melted butter in her cookie recipe, she adds an extra step that makes all the difference. After melting the butter, Tosi lets the fat cool to the touch before adding it to her sugar mixture. This helps create a better end product thanks to the butter's lower temperature, which results in less spread in the dough and a much denser interior.

While novice bakers might not believe that something as simple as the temperature of butter is a big deal in cookies, baking is a very delicate process, and temperature plays a big role in the outcome of any dessert. (For example, the temperature of eggs makes a huge difference in chocolate chip cookies too.) Now, if you really want some extra chew, read on for some more tips from Tosi.

Now if you're someone who thinks there's no such thing as too dense a cookie, we're right there with you, and luckily chef Christina Tosi has some more ideas in mind to help your batch reach that deliciously dense, heavenly texture. According to her, adding 1 tablespoon of milk powder to your recipe's dry ingredients can really elevate this classic dessert. Used in lieu of liquid milk, milk powder is simply regular milk that's had all its water extracted. So, milk powder has all that fatty depth of flavor as liquid milk, just without the water, so it offers concentrated amounts of fat, protein, and flavor. This results in a thicker, denser chocolate chip cookie with plenty of added richness.

Now if you're feeling reluctant to buy milk powder because it's a bit more of an unconventional choice than a gallon of regular milk, we get it. Still, know that milk powder is a shelf stable product and can sit in your pantry for years. Even if you only use a tablespoon of this stuff for an occasional baking project, it should still hold up for recipes to come.

Now to really ensure a batch of cookies comes out extra fudgy and decadent, there is one last ingredient Christina Tosi recommends trying. Add 3 tablespoons of Feuilletine to your cookie mixture and taste the difference.

While this might not be an ingredient novice bakers are familiar with, Feuilletine is a common ingredient used in pastry making, and it's underrated for more reasons than one. It is essentially a wafer cookie that's been crushed into small flakes, and it retains its classic crunchiness in most recipes, helping all the soft, gooey ingredients of a cookie melt and stick together.

If you don't want to add another item to the shopping list, you can easily make Feuilletine at home with a few staple ingredients. All you need is some butter, sugar, flour, and a few other household goods. With these three tips in your tool belt, your cookies should come out to fudgy perfection. But hey, if you really want some more suggestions, check out Duff Goldman's secret tip for gooey cookies next.