Hi! If you want big, fat, soft and chewy chocolate chunk cookies, then oh boy have you come to the right place! These are as close to cookie perfection as I’ve ever come – round, thick and soft with a delicious vanilla taste and a gorgeous texture.
The Perfect Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies are packed full of two kinds of chocolate – chips, and chunks! Having different types (milk and plain) and shapes of chocolate really helps to make a more interesting and tasty cookie – as does sprinkling a bit of sea salt on top before the dough balls go into the oven. OMG Yum!
A warning – these cookies will not last long! In fact, some of the cookie dough mysteriously disappeared too – strange! I suggest that you hide some in a place that no one will think to look!
Achieving cookie perfection does mean that we have to make sure to follow a few steps that might differ from cookie recipes that you’re used to. The most important thing to note is the chilling of the dough – it’s a must to ensure these cookies turn out great, but it does mean that they aren’t something that you can make at the last-minute – at least not with quite the same thickness. And these cookies are thick – take a look at the pictures! They’re about 2.5cm tall!
Bear in mind though that the dough balls freeze beautifully, and so it’s a fantastic idea to make a whole batch of these cookies, but only bake half, popping the other half of dough balls into the freezer for the times that an emergency cookie (or cookie dough! Have you tasted frozen cookie dough? Lordy…) craving strikes.
If you’re ready to up your cookie game, follow these steps –
- Use light brown sugar (usually called light brown muscavado sugar in the UK) alongside caster. It gives a much richer, deeper flavour and helps keep these cookies moist and soft.
- Melt your butter – I know it seems counter-intuitive, but the melted butter helps these cookies to be super chewy!
- Chill – the dough before baking it. This is a must! Anywhere from 2 – 72 hours chilling time will help the flavours to deepen, and will mean that your cookies won’t spread into cookie puddles when baked. I chilled my dough for about 48 hours with these cookies. Simply tip your cookie dough onto a large rectangle of parchment paper, and bring together into a rectangle with your hands. Fold over the parchment paper and use it to roll the cookie dough into a big, fat cookie dough sausage. It’s deeply satisfying! Twist the ends of the parchment paper so your cookie dough sausage looks like a great big sweetie and pop it into the fridge until you’re ready to use!
- Form rounds of cookie dough – Once you’re almost ready to bake your cookies, remove your cookie dough sausage from the fridge, and use a sharp knife to cut into rounds that are about 2.5cm tall. The cutting motion will squish down the cookie’s a bit and make them more rectangular than round, so use your hands to shape them back into a circle shape, shaping them firmly until they’re quite tall (see pictures below). If you want prettily symmetrical and round cookies, you have to make sure your dough is completely circular – perfect cookies ain’t happening by accident!
- Freeze – I know, another step! If it’s a chilly day and your hands haven’t made the cookie dough too squishy, you can skip this step, but to guarantee reallly thick cookies, pop them into the freezer for 10-15 minutes.
- Underbake! A scant ten minutes in the oven is all these cookies need! They won’t look done, but whip them out of the oven anyway and let them cool and firm up completely on the baking sheet.


- 175g unsalted butter
- 150g light brown sugar
- 75g caster or golden caster sugar
- 1 tbsp vanilla bean paste
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tsp corn flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 300g plain flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 250g chocolate chunks / chips or a combination of both
- plus 50g more to decorate the tops of the cookies
- Let's make our dough! Don't forget, you ideally need to chill the dough for at least 1 hour.
- First, melt your butter in a large heatproof bowl until completely liquid. Add the two kinds of sugar and beat thoroughly. Next, break in and beat in the two eggs, and then stir in the vanilla bean paste.
- In another large bowl, sift together the corn flour, baking powder, plain flour and salt, and gently stir into the butter mixture. Add in the 250g of chocolate chunks, briefly stir, and then tip onto a large rectangle of parchment paper and smush into a rectangle. Fold over the parchment paper and roll the dough until it forms a long round sausage. Twist the ends of the parchment paper so that you have a giant sweetie of cookie dough! Chill the dough in the fridge for 1 - 72 hours.
- When you're almost ready to bake, remove the dough from the fridge and use a sharp knife to cut rounds of dough about 2.5cm wide. Shape them into round, tall discs, and then pop them into the freezer to chill for 10-15 minutes while you preheat your oven to 170C/350f/gas mark 5 and line three large cookie sheets with parchment paper or non-stick baking mats.
- Just before you bake, press more chocolate chunks on top of each cookie - as many as you can fit on! And sprinkle with a little sea salt. Bake for ten minutes, until the edges are JUST starting to brown. Remove from the oven and allow to completely cool on the baking sheet (or overnight).

I’ve tried lots of things to give you really TALL, thick and chewy cookies and THIS is the foolproof method! It’s a must if you love cookies that are so soft and dough like inside and crispy on the outside!
x Kerry
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Hi. I was wondering whether using light brown sugar instead of light brown muscavado sugar would make a difference to the cookies??
Hi Sophie! It shouldn’t at all – they’re absolutely interchangable
Chocolate Chip Cookies = Delicious (and perfect with a class of milk!) My sister makes really great chocolate chip cookies (I always burn the bottom of mine – urgh.) My go-to cookie recipe would be Oatmeal Scotchies or No Bake Cookies. I seem to burn everything else!
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Saving this post! Thanks!
I do adore really good chocolate chip cookies! I can’t decide if I like them straight from the oven or once the chocolate has set though! 🙂
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I love everything about these cookies!
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Hi great cookie recipe. Just what I have been loking for. Is it 170 fan for the oven?
thanks
Thanks Claire! For a fan oven you’ll need to put it on a lower temperature, about 150 if its preheated. I hope you enjoy!