The Key Ingredient I Always Skip For The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

I was pretty surprised to find out that making brownies without melted chocolate tended to make them fudgier and gooier.

But I’m not the only one to have noticed the result. 

Food and cookery writer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall found that cocoa batters rendered the dessert “truffle-y and rich without being too heavy – and it seems to be easier to produce the great shiny crust so beloved of brownie purists”. 

I’ve stuck to the trick ever since, even when a recipe tells me not to. I’ll confess I commit another cocoa-based infraction, too: I never, ever use chocolate chips when making cookies, no matter how much I’m told to. 

Why avoid chocolate chips in, er, chocolate chip cookies? 

Often, chocolate chips – which are usually made to maintain their tiny teardrop shape even when cooked – behave differently to craggy, unevenly chopped chocolate. 

They don’t seep or melt into decadent puddles as much as their chopped chocolate cousins. Chocolate chips are also uniform, which makes each bite predictable (welcome to some, but I would argue it makes eye-rolling-back “best bites” less likely; it also stops chocolate from pooling evenly in the biscuit).

Then, there’s the question of quality. 

“To use chopped chocolate is to relinquish a bit of control in how the cookie looks, but to gain control of the type of chocolate you stir into the dough,” Epicurious said. 

While chocolate chips can come in milk or dark chocolate, it’s very hard to find brands that give you control over the percentage of cocoa for either option. Chocolate bars, meanwhile, allow you to pick the best match for your bake (I don’t like to go below 70% for a plain chocolate chip cookie).

And though some brands reliably offer less palm oil and more cocoa butter than others, that choice becomes far more limited once you start looking at premade chocolate chips.

Nashville business Bunica’s Bakery shared a video on social media stating that in their experience, the chocolate from bars are typically more delicious than chips: “The darks are rich while the milks are creamy.”

Pros agree we should choose chopped chocolate

If you think I’m getting into “old woman shouts at cloud” territory here, fair enough – but at least I’m not alone in my skyward ramblings. 

Flour company King Arthur has pointed out on its site that Ruth Wakefield, who’s credited with inventing chocolate chips in 1938, actually used chopped chocolate for the job.

After the company tried multiple recipes comparing chocolate chip vs chopped chocolate cookies, “test after test proved that chopped chocolate produced a superior cookie”.

Recipe developer Molly Marzalek-Kelly, who was initially sceptical about the approach, told the publication: “Small, pebble-like chocolate chips don’t blend easily into the dough like chopped chocolate, thus leaving more open space for the cookie dough to spread or puff while baking.

“This may lead to cookies that are cakey rather than chewy.”

Meanwhile, Gemma Stafford, a professional chef, cookbook author, and host of Bigger Bolder Baking, said in a YouTube clip: “Do not use chocolate chips in your cookies… you want to use a chocolate bar, something around 72%.”

She urged bakers to chop up the bar so you get big and little chunks – and “when this bakes, it will pool, and it will melt all throughout your cookie”. Yum.

And ex-Epicurious writer David Tamarkin, who’s a staunch defender of chopped chocolate in cookies, wrote: “You can’t ruin something as amazing as a chocolate chip cookie. Except, you know, by using chocolate chips”.

So, for the foreseeable future, I’ll be using the trick on my favourite cookie recipe (at the moment, I’m on a Sally’s Baking Addiction kick, though I’ve found the New York Times’ hit recipe has proven delicious, even in an air fryer).