These salted chocolate chip cookies are the fastest homemade cookie recipe I’ve ever made, and they come together in just one bowl, no mixer required. They’re loaded with chocolate chips, and the hit of flaky sea salt on top really sends them over the top.
The chocolate chip cookie can be a point of dissension. Everyone has their favorite: their grandmother’s recipe or that one they used to buy in the mall, and let’s not ignore the recipe cited as “the best” from the NY Times.
So while I have my family’s favorite Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie, I’m happy to preheat my oven to try one more (you know, for science). Some stack up, and some don’t. This one though, it’s a keeper.
It comes from Milk Bar Life: Recipes and Stories by Christina Tosi of Momofuku fame. While at the library and leafing through the cookbook, I was immediately drawn to Tosi’s headnote that states, “this cookie is great because you can make it by hand in one bowl, with a wooden spoon, just like the old gals used to do.”
One bowl? No mixer? It truly is as easy as that and the cookie dough is ready to bake in just about 10 minutes flat.
Heidi’s Tips for Recipe Success
- The secret ingredient used in this recipe is powdered nonfat milk. If you don’t use powdered milk often (I know I don’t) Carnation offers it in a small packet that tucks easily into your pantry or drawer.
- Take the cookies out of the oven while the middles still look soft and slightly underbaked. As the cookies cool, the middles will fall a bit, but the residual heat inside the cookies will finish cooking them through.
- Choose flaky sea salt for finishing off these cookies, not table salt. Table salt has finer grains, making it taste much saltier than sea salt.
What’s in This Recipe?
The full recipe, with amounts, can be found in the recipe card below.
- Unsalted butter — If you use salted butter and then also top the chocolate chip cookies with sea salt, you’re going to wind up with super salty cookies. So stick to unsalted.
- Sugar — There’s a full cup of sugar in the cookie dough, most of which is brown sugar which adds lots of moisture as well as a caramely flavor. Round out the cup with a little granulated sugar for pure sweetness.
- Egg — Helps bind the dough together.
- Vanilla extract — 2 teaspoons perfume the cookie dough with a rich vanilla flavor.
- All-purpose flour — Scoop the flour into the measuring cup to avoid packing it.
- Baking powder + baking soda — Use both leavening agents to avoid winding up with hockey pucks.
- Chocolate chips — I used semi-sweet chips, but dark chocolate chips or even chunks would be just as decadent.
- Salt — Kosher salt flavors the cookie dough, while flaky sea salt is sprinkled on top.
How to Make Chocolate Chip Cookies
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I am a huge Tossi fan and these are spot on to her flavors. I use this recipe all the time.
~Carlton, FoodieCrush reader
- Combine the wet ingredients. The butter is melted first, then mixed by hand into the sugars. You’ll mix it for a good minute or two, and as Tosi suggests, flex your muscles when mixing to result in a glossy sheen after adding the egg and vanilla.
- Add the dry ingredients. Once your arms have been sufficiently exercised, mix in the dry ingredients followed by the chocolate chips.
- Scoop the cookie dough. Scoop the cookie dough into golf ball-sized balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking tray. Sprinkle the tops of each cookie with some flaky sea salt.
- Bake, baby, bake. Bake the sea salt chocolate chip cookie until the edges are golden brown but the middles are still soft.
FAQs
I’ve only made these salted chocolate chip cookies as written, so I can’t say for sure what a good substitute for the milk powder would be.
The cookie dough is well and truly loaded with chocolate chips (12 full ounces!). If that’s too much chocolate for you, feel free to add less.
Yes, you want to use both types of salt. They have different grain sizes, which gives them a different level of saltiness (table salt, on the other hand, has very fine grains and tastes powerfully of salt).
Storage Tips
Store the Milk Bar cookies in a zip-top bag on the counter for up to 5 days or freeze for up to 3 months.
You can also freeze the raw cookie dough (after you’ve shaped it into balls). Bake the cookie dough from frozen, noting that you’ll likely need to add an extra minute or two to the total bake time.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I have never commented on a recipe before. But I had to….these cookies are a-mazing. I made a double batch – good thing. Every day for about 5 days now my husband has praised me for this treat. I love to bake but sometimes the recipes are vague or don’t turn out the way it states. This recipe doesn’t disappoint. Easy to follow and addictive!!! The salt – yum. Go big or go home!!!! Delicious – thank you!
~Kerry, FoodieCrush reader
If you make this recipe, please let me know! Leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating below, leave a comment to tell us what you think, and tag me on Instagram @foodiecrush.
Milk Bar’s Salted Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
Ingredients
- ½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and just warm to the touch
- ¾ cup packed light brown sugar
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons nonfat milk powder
- 1 ¼ teaspoons kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- 12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips*
- ¼ cup flaky sea salt , for sprinkling on top before baking
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375ºF.
- With a wooden spoon, mix the sugars together in a large bowl and add the melted butter. Stir vigorously for about a minute or more. Mix the egg and vanilla in the measuring cup you used for the sugar and add to the mixture. Stir until the mix gathers a glossy sheen, about 1 more minute.
- Mix in the flour, milk powder, kosher salt, baking powder, and baking soda until just combined. Stir in the chocolate chips and mix until evenly distributed.
- Use a #24 squeeze handle scoop to portion the dough (or lightly form it into balls about the size of a golf ball) and place them on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper about 2 to 3 inches apart. Sprinkle the tops of each cookie with some of the flaky sea salt (note that you may not need to use all of the ¼ cup of salt).
- Bake for 9-11 minutes or until golden brown around the edges but still soft in the middle. The cookies will fall as they cool. Transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Notes
Nutrition
More Easy Cookie Recipes You’ll Love
- Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Coconut No-Bake Cookies
- Peanut Butter Cookies
- Zucchini Cookies
- Loaded Monster Cookies
- Coconut Lime Cookies
- White Chocolate Snickerdoodles
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kitcheniest
Loved this recipe!!
When I made it the first time, silly me dumped in a tablespoon of baking soda instead of a teaspoon because I misread the ingredient list HAHA. Only found out after the cookies were baked when it tasted really metallic and bitter.
So I threw the first batch into the bin (sigh, what a waste) and went straight into working on the second batch! Followed all the ingredients to a tee, and when the cookies were out, they were REALLY good. Only thing that I would tweak in the future is to cut the sugar by half, especially the granulated sugar because it was a tad sweet and I could still feel the grainy texture of the sugar.
But considering this is my first time baking, I am so happy with how they turned out! Thank you for this recipe ◡̈
Kjier
These cookies can get my son to do his math homework, no questions asked. Yep, they’re math homework good..
Chiamaka Odia
I just had a craving for salted top chocolate chip cookies and these over delivered, even though I was out of vanilla and had no milk powder. I also use coarse sea salt as that was what I had at home. Amazing! Perfect ending to a hectic week !!! I am all smiles here .
Casey
Wow! I have baked for over 50 yrs, searching for the absolute chocolate chip cookie recipe. Gotta say this is it!!!! The best ever. And super easy!!
Fantastic crumb, great mouth feel, a tiny bit crispy, soft in the center, divine chocolate(dark). Have baked this recipe 6 times in 10 days…absolutely consistent cookie.
This is a wonderful, delicious “what a cookie should be” cookie!!!!!
THANK YOU!
Heidi
Thanks so much Casey, so glad you liked the recipe!
Bari Jo
My son made these for my birthday and they were amazing!!!!!
Mike
Gave this a go and they turned out great! So damn yurmmy. Definitely the best cookies I’ve ever made.
I read some comments on here about there being too much butter or that their batter was runny and they had to add more flour. I didn’t notice that at all. I beat the tepid butter, sugar and eggs for ~2.5 mins and it formed a thick caramel-like goo which mixed with the flour to form a perfect sticky dough.
The only mod I made was skipping the flaked salt on top because they already have a slightly noticeable saltiness that’s perfectly balanced.
Thanks for sharing!!
Megan
They have good flavor but I had the same issue as a lot of users in that my first batch came out completely flat. Disappointing. I’ll try more flour and chilling the dough balls before baking.
Dani LeClair
Love. Love. Love!!!!! They go together so quickly and come out like a dream. I sprinkled Maldon salt when they came out of the oven… and not having powdered milk on hand, I took a wild shot and used CoffeeMate coffee whitener. I’m not sure the purpose of the powdered milk, but there were no noticeable issues with CoffeeMate!
Ashley @ Foodie Crush
YAY! Thank you so much Dani
Teresa
My new go to cookie especially. Melting butter made a world of difference for me.
Selena
I always liked those cookies which had a bit of saltiness in them. I’m glad I came across this amazing recipe, Heidi. :)
Glad you found it Selena, hope you enjoy!
DeeBee
I’m on my second batch of these – excellent! However definitely only put in about 8 ounces of chocolate chips and added peacans into the mix. My boyfriend ate 7 of them after they cooled so….
My daughter and her friends made them again last night. I can’t keep out of the dough. Glad your boyfriend agrees :)
Ashley @ Foodie Crush
They are SO GOOD! I don’t blame him!
jeff
I couldn’t bring myself to add 1/4 cup of flaked sea salt to the batter, I assume the 1/4 cup is for sprinkling on top, not added to the batter?
Ashley @ Foodie Crush
Yes Jeff, it is for the top :)
Laura Torchia
how many does one batch make?
8chiase
Chúng thật tuyệt vời !!! Chúng rất dễ dàng và nhanh chóng để làm và là tất cả mọi thứ mà một chiếc bánh quy sô cô la nên có – mềm ở giữa và giòn ở phần cuối. Làm cho chúng chính xác theo chỉ dẫn
Ayla Turner
I usually make these cookies as the recipe states, but the last time I modified them to be vegan. I replaced an equal amount of butter with a vegan butter replacement, replaced the egg with 1/2 a banana, and used vegan chocolate chips. They turned out well, rave reviews from my vegan friend.
Liz P.
So I totally thought the 1/4 cup was for the batter… Ugh lol. I have salty cookies now (but they’re surprisingly not terrible…). I also left out the milk powder because I didn’t have any.
I’d recommend adding a disclosure saying that the 1/4 cup is for the top…
Liz
I too take my chocolates chip cookies seriously! If you do the brown butter version again, then use two eggs instead of one, or for a thicker cookie use one egg, one egg yolk; and 2Tbsp of whole milk.
Hey Liz, thanks for your insight, good tips for sure. Happy cookie eating.
Ashley @ Foodie Crush
Thanks, Liz!
Sarah Travers
So I love a new good cookie recipe, and having recently watched Christina Tossi’s milk bar episode on Netflix I was so pumped to make these cookies. However I don’t always read the blog posts that go along with recipes I find on Pinterest because they can be really long and all I really want is the recipe, so thinking this was Christina’s original recipe I went to the store and got flaked sea salt, milk powder, and unsalted butter and proceded to make two recipes of extremely salty cookies even when I left out some of the salt only to discover after doing some googling that Christina’s real recipe doesn’t use any salt flakes and definitely not 1/4 cup in the batter which is what this recipe led me to believe. After reading the blog post and realizing it was probably a typo and I should of used commen sense I am left with my second batch of extremely salty chocolate chip cookies ( that I will probably throw away) and a bag of flaked sea salt that was pricey and I never use and a bag of milk powder that I never use. All that being said, please consider not using 1/4 cup of flaked sea salt in your cookie dough. Also I will say the consistency of the cookies was perfect; they are just disgustingly salty… Cheers!
Jacob
About how many cookies does this recipe make?
Ashley @ Foodie Crush
I usually get about 24-36 depending on size!
Ed
Oh…My…GOD!!!
These were amazing!!! They were easy and quick to make and were everything a chocolate cookie should be – soft in the middle and crunchy at the ends. Made them exactly as directed
For those of you that had problems with the cookie spreading too much or the batter being too runny, the reason is the melted butter is too warm and it’s melting the sugars. You should aim for barely warm to touch (65-70 degrees)
Ashley @ Foodie Crush
Thanks for the tips Ed!
Blog chia se
This is the recipe that made my family fall in love with Brussels Sprouts.
Mon an ngon
Oh these are so good!
Mon an ngon
Oh đây là rất tốt! Tôi đã làm cho họ ngày hôm qua và họ là một chút ngọt ngào, nhưng tôi sẽ 100% được làm cho họ một lần nữa.
Sophia
Same issue as stated above… Making them now and it’s soooo runny! Added more flour. Let’s see if that helps!
Mari
It’s highly unusual to use this much butter people!
My guess is that it’s a typo to require two sticks of butter
No wonder y’all have spread and need more flour.
Maybe I’m mistaken but perhaps this can be addressed by the recipes’ creator
Cau noi hay ve cuoc song
I modified The NY Times recipe to include browned butter. The first try was too dry because of evaporation. I browned