Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies
by Sommer Collier — on Dec 1, 2025 With just a few special but simple ingredients, you can make bakery-style cookies that are soft and chewy, lightly crisp around the edges, loaded with melty chocolate chips, and topped with flaky sea salt. My no-chill salted chocolate chip cookies recipe is the best combination of sweet and salty flavors to make your taste buds do a little happy dance!
I usually don’t have a strong sweet tooth day to day. Unless we are talking about cookies… Because yeah, admittedly, I do love cookies almost as much as everyone’s favorite fuzzy blue monster. Classic cookies like my pillowy-soft sugar cookie recipe are great for the holidays, my best oatmeal raisin cookie recipe is a perfect kid-friendly afternoon snack, and I could make my best peanut butter cookies recipe every.single.day. (The family fully supports this idea.) However, this salted chocolate chip cookie recipe deserves a place on “the best cookie” list! It has that classic ccc flavor, of course, yet with a couple of additions that make it special. Even so, it’s a super simple to make, almost no-fail recipe.
Table of Contents
Sommer’s Recipe Highlights
Amazing Flavor – This recipe is made with brown sugar, white sugar, and chocolate chips for treats that are sweet but not too sweet, with a deep, soul-warming taste. And a little sprinkle of sea salt on top makes the chocolatey flavor pop!
Perfect Cookie Texture – I am very particular about the texture of my cookies. If they are too hard, too crunchy, too chewy, or lacking in chocolate chips (perhaps the biggest offense) yeah, sure, I’ll still eat them. But I won’t be happy about it. My tried-and-true salted ccc recipe has the perfect sugar ratio and ground oats to practically guarantee a chewy and unbelievably soft texture every time.
No-Chill Chocolate Chip Cookies – Many recipes require chilling the dough before baking to prevent spreading in the oven. But I’ve perfected this recipe so the room-temperature cookie dough balls spread a bit without melting into puddles. And because I skipped involving the fridge, these cookies are ready to dunk in milk and devour in 30 minutes or less!
Key Ingredients and Tips
- Usual dry ingredients – I start with the basics of baking, including all-purpose flour, baking soda, and table salt or kosher salt. I also use cornstarch to make the cookies extra soft.
- Oats – You can buy old-fashioned oats and grind them yourself, or purchase ground oat flour. Using a combination of all-purpose flour and less gluten-y oat flour makes cookies that are chewy and soft, but not too chewy and soft.
- Butter – Unsalted butter is my preference for baking, so I can control the saltiness in a recipe. This is definitely the best way to go when making cookies topped with salt.
- Sugars – A combination of both white and brown sugars creates the best flavor and texture.
- Eggs – I let my eggs sit on the counter for 15-20 minutes to bring them to room temperature. Cold eggs slow down the baking process and can make the cookies cook unevenly.
- Vanilla extract – Don’t overlook quality here, people. There really is a huge difference in taste between cheap and more-pricy-but-worth-it vanilla.
- Chocolate chips – I like semisweet chocolate chips for this recipe. However, you can use dark chocolate, milk chocolate, or chocolate chunks as well. Just be sure you have at least 12 ounces… It’s better to go over an ounce or two than to have too few chocolate chips.
- Salt for topping – I like to go a bit fancy for bakery-style cookies and use fleur de sel, a flaky sea salt from France. However, coarse kosher salt also gives the cookies just the right hit of salty flavor!
How to Make
Find the full ingredient proportions, detailed instructions, storage tips, and a video tutorial in the printable form at the bottom of the post.
Prep – I do my prep work, like lining baking sheets with parchment and gathering all of the ingredients, while the oven preheats to 350 degrees.
Grind the Oats – Either a high-powered blender or food processor works well to turn rolled oats into a fine flour. If you’re using packaged oat flour, you can obviously skip this step.
Combine the Dry Ingredients – I typically use my stand mixer when making cookies, but a large mixing bowl and an electric hand mixer will do the trick. Whichever you’re using, dump the dry ingredients, except for the sugars, into the mixing bowl and combine on medium speed.
Add the Wet Ingredients – In go both of the sugars along with the butter, eggs, and vanilla.
Mix everything together on medium speed just until you get a thick, tacky cookie dough.
Stir in the Chocolate Chips – I use a rubber spatula, but you can also use a wooden spoon, to stir in the chips. Don’t forget to put some aside to top the cookies right before baking for an extra chippy topping!
Scoop and Roll – I highly recommend getting yourself a true cookie dough scoop if you bake cookies more than a couple of times a year. It makes it easy to portion out an equal amount of perfectly round dough and plop it onto the baking sheet.
Gently roll the dough into ‘lil balls and place them spaced out on the baking sheet. No-chill chocolate chip cookies tend to spread out a good bit when they bake because the butter isn’t cold, and therefore melts more quickly.
Press several of the reserved chocolate chips into the top of each dough ball before baking.
Bake – In the oven, they go for about 8-12 minutes. I always set my timer to the low end to make sure they aren’t overbaking. You know the chocolate chip cookies are done and ready to be pulled out of the oven when the crisp edges are set and lightly golden. They might even look a tad underdone, but don’t worry, the cookies will firm up as they cool.
Get Salty – Quick, sprinkle on the salt before the cookies cool and firm up!
Expert Tip
My number one tip for making chippy cookies that are amazingly soft yet chewy is to not over-bake them. Over-baked cookies immediately become hard and crunchy. Trust me, I have tested this many, many times, and while I never say no to a chocolatey cookie, there have been some questionable batches when I left the cookies in the oven too long.
To avoid this, I pull the baking sheet out of the oven as soon as the cookies are firm around the edges and not wet in the center. The cookies should still look almost underdone, like they’d melt apart if picked up. (But don’t actually pick them up until they cool!)
Storage Notes
This recipe makes about 45 cookies, which is admittedly a lot. But I still make a full batch of dough, even if I only need one or two dozen at a time. The raw cookie dough will keep well in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days, or in the freezer for up to 2 months.
These cookies can be stored in a sealed container at room temperature for up to 1 week. Or so I’ve been told, but salty and sweet chocolate cookies never last more than a couple of days in this house!
Frequently Asked Questions
I sprinkle on salt right after they come out of the oven. The salt flakes stick better when the chocolate chip cookies are still warm and soft, and a little tacky.
Oh yeah, it makes a big difference, and unsalted butter is definitely the way to go when you’re making cookies topped with salt. Otherwise, the sweetness of the chocolate would be completely overshadowed.
Cookie dough is thick, and the chips get stuck if you try to mix them in with a standing or electric hand mixer. Stirring them in by hand with a spatula or spoon helps evenly distribute the chocolate chips without overworking the dough.
More Classic Cookie Recipes
Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies
Video
Ingredients
- 2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
- ½ cup ground old fashioned oats or oat flour
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ¾ cup unsalted butter melted
- ¾ cup brown sugar
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
- 1 teaspoon fleur de sel for tops or kosher salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line several baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.
- If grinding dried oats, place them in a food processor or high-power blender. Turn on high until the oats are finely ground. Then measure out ½ cup.
- Set out a large mixing bowl or stand mixer. Measure and add the flour, ground oats, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt. Mix to combine.
- Then mix in the melted butter, both sugars, eggs, and vanilla. Beat until the mixture is smooth. (This can be done by hand if you do not own an electric mixer.)
- Mix the chocolate chips in evenly by hand. Pro Tip: If you want your cookies to look very “chippy” on top, reserve one-third of the chocolate chips, then press several chips into the top of each dough ball before baking.
- Use a 1 tablespoon cookie scoop to portion out the dough balls evenly. Roll each ball a little in your hands. Then place them on the cookie sheets 2 ½ inches apart.
- Bake for 8-12 minutes, until the edges look slightly golden, but the centers look a little under baked. Once out of the oven, immediately sprinkle the tops with fleur de sel. Cool on the cookie sheets for at least 5 minutes before moving.
