Chocolate Chip Cookie Roll-Out Recipe

Written by Mike Tamplin • Jan 16, 2012

Chocolate chip is, by far, my favorite kind of cookie and I was excited to find a recipe for a delicious, roll-out version.

(By the way, for those new to cookie-baking, when I mention a “roll-out recipe” I’m talking about a cookie recipe that is great for decorating because it (a) easily rolls out flat when using a rolling pin and remains flat after baking, and (b) keeps its cutout shape well after baking, too. On contrary, a “drop cookie” recipe is what I would consider the opposite. That’s when you bake spoonful-sized balls of dough and the resulting cookie is kind of puffy and round after baking. Just FYI.)

Chocolate Chip Cookie Roll-Out Recipe

Ingredients

1 cup (two sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar (Either light or dark is fine to use.)
½ cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

Step 1

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Step 2

In a mixer, cream together butter and the two sugars. Mix until fluffy and well incorporated.

Step 3

Add eggs, salt, vanilla extract, and baking powder and beat until well mixed.

Step 4

Add flour a cupful at a time, to the butter/sugar/egg mixture. After everything is well mixed, the dough should be non-greasy to the touch. If the dough is still sticky, add an extra half cup of flour.

Step 5

With a hand spatula, fold in the mini chocolate chips and mix until just combined.

Step 6

Roll to 1/4 inch thickness between two sheets of parchment or wax paper. (I love my Joseph Joseph rolling pin because the guides take the guess work out of wondering if your cookies are the correct thickness and evenly rolled out.) After rolling, chill the dough for at least 30 minutes.

Step 7

Once the dough is well chilled and hard to the touch, cut out shapes and place them on a parchment paper-lined, light-colored baking sheet. Chill the cutout shapes again before baking.

Step 8

Bake at 375 degrees for 7-9 minutes. Remove from the oven before the first indication of the edges turning brown. Leave the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes.

Step 9

Remove cookies from the baking sheet with a spatula and place on a cooling rack to cool before decorating.

A few things to note.

Because this recipe has chocolate chips, I recommend a sturdy cookie cutter to cut through those tough chunks. For this batch, I also carved out custom cookie shapes with a parrying knife but I found it to be quite difficult. If you are thinking about using custom cookie shapes that involve cutting them out by hand I would not recommend this type of dough.

Compared to the cutter, there’s lovely minimal to no spread after baking.

This chocolate chip cookie roll-out recipe has very minimal spread after baking. However, because of the chocolate chips, the edges are still a little rough compared to my basic cookie recipe.

That being said, I think the rough edges and the dark chip speckles would add a nice background element to decorated cookies. I could see this dough being a great complement to themes like dinosaurs or safari sets, just to name a few.