The Great Cookie Experiment

Our family went on a mission over the last few months to find the best chocolate chip cookie recipe. I’m sharing all the recipes we tried, as well as our final verdicts!

I’m a big fan of traditions. I always have been, I always will be. Corey and I often joke that if you do something twice it has to be tradition, and it really is kind of true with our family. We love a routine and we’re always looking for ways to make even the most mundane days feel a little bit special.

Another thing I’m a big fan of is chocolate chip cookies.

Corey and I have been avid chocolate chip cookie fans for as long as I can remember – in fact, I even worked them into my wedding vows!

“Because I love you, I promise to never stop making you chocolate chip cookies and banana bread”

I mean, there was a lot more to the vows than just that part but I think I’ve made my point here.

So, given our love of cookies and traditions, it should come as no surprise to you that a few months ago we embarked on a mission to find the best chocolate chip cookies in all the land. We have made the good ol’ Nestle Tollhouse recipe for the last decade or so, but we were curious if there was anything better out there. I shared all of our cookie-making adventures on Instagram stories and I’ve had several requests to share the final results of our little experiment, so I thought I’d round ’em all up here on the blog!

First up, a list of aaaaall the recipes we tried. Obviously, we couldn’t try every recipe out there (do you know how many chocolate chip cookie recipes there are?!) but I tried to find the ones that were suggested most often, or the ones I had heard the most about.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipes

• Joanna Gaines’ chocolate chip cookies
• Pan-banging chocolate chip cookies
• Jacques Torres chocolate chip cookies
• Sally’s Baking Addiction soft chocolate chip cookies
• Food52 chocolate chip cookies
• Pinch of Yum chocolate chip cookies
• Joy Food Sunshine chocolate chip cookies

Overall thoughts

One thing we learned really quickly during this experiment is that Corey and I have vastly different tastes in chocolate chip cookies. He likes to dip his in milk and wants them to be super chewy, firm, and crispy on the outside. I, on the other hand, am perfectly happy if my cookie is so gooey that it could basically just be considered warm dough.

Jackson, of course, is just thrilled to be eating cookies.

In the end, Corey said that he feels like any of the recipes we tried are great, as long as we remember to flatten his dough before baking it. We’ve found that if we make sure his cookie is nice and flat going into the oven and mine is still rounded, we both end up with a texture that we like and they bake in about the same amount of time!

Our final verdicts

We ranked the cookies based on the dough, the overall flavor, the texture, and how easy they were to make. We often get an itch for cookies at random times and don’t want to have to plan too far ahead! Because of that, the Jacques Torres recipe will never be a go-to for us – the required 24-hour chill time just isn’t practical for a cookie-hungry family!

Corey’s favorite cookie in terms of flavor and texture were the pan-banging cookies (which, funny enough, were my least favorite). However, they were incredibly finicky to bake and took forever – so they won’t become a regular for us.

My overall favorite cookie was from Sally’s Baking Addiction. It was perfectly gooey and soft and incredible. But guess what? It was Corey’s least favorite! It fell apart when he tried to dunk it in milk, and he felt like it was much too soft for him.

So, where does that leave us?

Well, we did agree that aside from our favorite (which the other person hated – boo!), our top two recipes were the Joanna Gaines cookies and the Joy Food Sunshine cookies. We both agree that the cookie on the Joanna recipe is a little better while the dough on the other is a little better.

I think that our official decision is that for now we’re going to be sticking to the Joanna Gaines recipe for a little while. But, if we ever want to switch it up, our next go-to will for sure be from Joy Food Sunshine.

Annnd I may sneak in one more batch from Sally’s Baking Addiction to see if I can flatten Corey’s cookie enough to make him like it. Hah!

Of course, now I have to know – what’s YOUR favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe? Are there any we missed that we just have to try?