mini chocolate chip cookies

these best ever mini chocolate chocolate chip cookies are the perfect bite sized treats. crisp and golden, each cookie is generously studded with melty chocolate chips. great for nibbling by the handful or enjoying with a cold glass of milk!

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THESE mini chocolate chip cookies are the bite-sized version of a classic choc chip cookie. crisp and golden, they’re studded with pockets of melty chocolate and are addictively snackable – before you know it, you’ve eaten a handful or two! or pour some in a bowl with milk and suddenly you’re transported back to saturday morning cartoons. despite their small size, these cookies are packed with the rich, buttery flavour you’d expect from the perfect chocolate chip cookie.

why you will love this crunchy mini chocolate chip cookies recipe

• easy recipe- this mini chocolate chip cookies recipe is a lot easier than it looks! it uses basic ingredients and has easy steps and no fancy tools are required – just a mixing bowl and a spoon. great for even beginner bakers!

• nostalgia factor – these mini chocolate chip cookies look almost like cookie crisp or other cookie-inspired cereals, which brings me back to my childhood!

• great as a snack – a handful of these mini chocolate chip cookies are a great snack for when you need a little sweet fix.

learn how to make miniature chocolate chip cookies

to make these homemade mini chocolate chip cookies, we’re going to start off by creaming together softened butter and a mix of granulated sugar and light brown sugar.

then, we’ll add a splash of vanilla and a large egg and mix that in. then, in another bowl mix together flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and a bit of salt. add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture, and mix it in until your mini chocolate chip cookies dough is formed. let the dough chill in the fridge for 30 minutes, and then split it into equal sized mini chocolate chip cookie balls.

bake until golden and crispy, then remove from the oven, serve with a glass of milk and we’re done!

mini chocolate chip cookies ingredients

• butter – in this cookie recipe, we’re going to use softened, room temperature butter over melted butter, and cream together the butter and sugars. you can use salted or unsalted, and adjust the amount of extra salt in the recipe accordingly. this is one of my favourite butters to use in cookie recipes.

• brown sugar – the brown sugar in this mini chocolate chip cookies recipe helps make these cookies softer and gives them a nicer flavour. this light muscovado sugar is one of my favourites. if you don’t want to use brown sugar, you can also just use all granulated sugar if you don’t mind it making these mini chocolate chip cookies crispy.

• granulated sugar – this recipe uses a mix of granulated sugar and brown sugar. the brown sugar keeps these mini chocolate chip cookies soft and the granulated sugar helps them spread and gives them a bit of crunch.

• egg – we’re just going to use one large egg in this small chocolate chip cookies recipe – make sure it’s at room temperature so that it’s able to combine easily with the rest of the ingredients.

• vanilla extract – optional, but a splash of it will add a nice, subtle vanilla flavour to your mini chocolate chip cookies cookies.

• flour – we’ll be using plain flour or all purpose flour for this mini chocolate chip cookies recipe.

• baking soda – i use just a small amount of baking soda for these mini chocolate chip cookies to get a good balance of spread and thickness.

• cornstarch – using cornstarch in this soft mini chocolate chip cookies recipe makes these cookies a bit more tender and soft. the result is a crispy and crunchy outside and soft, tender middle. if you don’t want to use cornstarch or don’t have it, you can just replace this with some extra flour.

• salt – a small amount of salt added to the dry ingredients helps balance out the sweetness in these mini chocolate chip cookies.

• milk or dark chocolate chips – you can use normal chocolate chips or mini chocolate chips in these thick mini chocolate chip cookies.

tools:

• large mixing bowl – for the mini chocolate chip cookies dough

• medium bowl – we’re going to mix all of the dry ingredients separately before adding them to the dough, so you’ll need a separate bowl for this

• baking sheets or baking tray – you’ll need a big baking sheet lined with parchment paper or baking paper for baking the cookies

• spoon or silicone spatula – there is no mixer needed for this recipe! just a mixing spoon is fine. you might want to use a mixer to make it easier to cream the butter and sugars together, but it’s absolutely not necessary (and i didn’t use one myself).

step by step instructions

for full measurements, keep scrolling down to the recipe below.

step one: in a large mixing bowl, add unsalted butter, light brown sugar and granulated sugar. using a spoon or a whisk, mix these together until combined. the mixture should look soft and creamy.

step two: add the large egg and a splash of vanilla to the butter and sugar mixture, and mix it in until combined.

step three: in another bowl, add the flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt, then mix all of this together.

step four: add the dry ingredients to the mini chocolate chip cookie mix and gently fold them in until you get a sticky dough.

step five: add chocolate chips to the mini chocolate chip cookie mix and mix them into the dough.

step six: place the bowl with the cookie dough in the fridge and let the dough chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. this will help the dough firm up a little and become easier to handle.

step seven: preheat oven around 15 minutes before baking your mini chocolate chip cookies, and line a big baking sheet or baking tray with parchment paper or baking paper.

step eight: once the dough has chilled, split it into bite sized cookie dough balls, then place the dough balls onto the lined baking sheet with some space between each one.

step nine: bake your mini batch of chocolate chip cookies for about 13-15 minutes or until they’re golden and crispy.

step ten: let the mini chocolate chip cookies cool on the tray, then serve with a glass of milk and let’s eat!

tips and notes

• use room temperature butter when making these mini chocolate chip cookies to ensure that it’s soft and easier to cream with the sugar. using a room temperature egg is also recommended as it will just be easier to incorporate into the rest of the mixture.

• if using salted butter instead of unsalted, leave out the extra salt stated in the recipe.

• these cookies are a mixture of crunchy and soft, with a crispy outside, and a tender middle. if you’d like to keep these mini chocolate chip cookies crunchy, and don’t want them to be soft, i would recommend using more granulated sugar instead of brown sugar.

• chill the dough for 30 minutes before baking so that the dough is easier to handle. this will also help enhance the flavour of these cookies as well as reduce spread and give you a thicker cookie.

• you want your mini chocolate chip cookies to be consistent in size, so i would recommend either weighing out the cookie dough balls or using a small cookie scoop or a teaspoon for each cookie. you can also use a piping bag to pipe out the dough for each cookie if you find that easier.

• i weighed out each cookie dough ball to be 5g – this would be the same as using a teaspoon of dough for each mini cookie.

• leave about 2 inches of space between each mini cookie dough ball as they’re going to spread in the oven slightly and you don’t want all of the cookies to melt into each other. you might have to use two separate baking sheets to bake all of the mini chocolate chip cookies.

• i used regular sized chocolate chips for these mini chocolate chip cookies, but you might want to use mini chocolate chips for a more even distribution of chocolate chips throughout the cookies.

• the mini chocolate chip cookies bake time will depend on your oven, as well as on whether you want your cookies to be soft and chewy or more on the crunchy side. i baked these mini chocolate chip cookies for a total of 15 minutes, and this gave me cookies that were crunchy on the outside with a more tender middle. if you want to keep these mini chocolate chip cookies chewy and soft, bake them for less time so that they’re slightly underdone when you take them out. if you want to keep these mini chocolate chip cookies crunchy instead, bake them for slightly longer than the stated time.

• be aware that mini chocolate chip cookies bake faster than regular sized cookies, so keep an eye on them as every oven is different.

• i usually use 1/4 tsp of salt in my cookie dough when using unsalted butter, but you can always increase this if you want your cookies to be a little less sweet. i would recommend increasing the salt to about 1/2 tsp instead of reducing the sugar if you find the cookies too sweet.

• once your mini chocolate chip cookie batch is out of the oven, let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack.

• use a kitchen scale to measure your ingredients. while i add both metric and cup measurements for this recipe, i always recommend using a kitchen scale to weigh out your ingredients for most accurate results.

• if you do decide to use cups, bear in mind that this recipe uses higher than typical flour measurements, as it takes into account the fact that most people tend to scoop their flour.

• once your cookies have cooled completely, store the mini chocolate chip cookies in an airtight container at room temperature to maintain crunchiness.

• although i’ve added a picture in this post of the mini chocolate chip cookies submerged in milk to have as mini chocolate chip cookies cereal, i actually wouldn’t recommend doing this as the cookies fell apart and crumbled up in the milk after some time. the reason for this is that homemade cookies don’t have stabilisers or any special ingredients that help them maintain their structure in milk the way that store-bought cereals do. crunchy cookies also tend to have a more delicate structure than chewy cookies do, so they are more likely to fall apart in liquid.

• if you really want to have these mini chocolate chip cookies in milk, i’d recommend dipping the cookies separately in the milk to soften them instead of adding them all to the milk as cereal. alternatively, you could underbake the cookies slightly so that they’re more on the chewy side, and therefore less delicate when you add them to milk.

frequently asked questions

1. can i make these mini chocolate chip cookies without brown sugar ?

   – yes, you can make these mini chocolate chip cookies using only white sugar. bear in mind that doing this will affect the texture and flavour of the cookies. the cookies will probably be a bit more on the crispy side and won’t have those caramel notes that brown sugar provides. but they will still be delicious even without the brown sugar!

2. can i use margarine instead of butter to make these mini chocolate chip cookies ?

   – yes, you can. butter will give these cookies a better flavour and texture, and using margarine will probably give you cookies that spread more and are less crisp, but other than that, it should be fine.

3. why did my mini chocolate chip cookies spread so much ?

   – cookies sometimes spread too much due to a number of reasons. it could be that your cookie dough is too warm or that your butter was overly soft. you want to make sure that the butter you use is at room temperature and soft enough to mix, but not so soft that it’s melting. you also want to make sure that you don’t skip the chilling time in the fridge.

4. can i use salted butter in this mini chocolate chip cookies recipe ?

   – yes, you can use salted butter instead of unsalted butter. if you do use salted butter for your mini chocolate chip cookies instead of unsalted, just leave out the extra salt in the dry ingredients.

5. do i have to use vanilla extract in this mini chocolate chip cookies recipe ?

   – the vanilla extract in this mini chocolate chip cookies recipe is optional. i like the subtle vanilla flavour it gives to these cookies, but if you would prefer not to use it or don’t have it, that’s also completely fine.

6. why are my mini chocolate chip cookies not crunchy ?

   – if your mini chocolate chip cookies aren’t crunchy, it could be that they’re underbaked. make sure that you preheat your oven before baking the cookies, and feel free to increase baking time by a few minutes. if you still find that they’re not crunchy, just turn off the oven once baking time is over and leave the cookies inside the oven for a few minutes with the oven door left ajar. this will help them crisp up a little.

7. how do i know when my mini chocolate chip cookies are done ?

   – you’ll know that the cookies are done when the edges of the cookies look golden brown. the middles might look slightly underdone, but they will crisp up as they cool.

8. can i make these mini chocolate chip cookies into bigger cookies ?

   – yes, you can. just bear in mind that you’ll need to adjust the baking time as bigger cookies will take more time to bake. bigger cookies might also be a little less crunchy throughout.

9. can i reduce the sugar in this mini chocolate chip cookies recipe ?

   – reducing sugar in a cookie recipe can affect both the taste and texture of the cookies. the cookies rely on the sugar for their crunch, so i wouldn’t recommend reducing it. if you find that the cookies are too sweet, i would recommend increasing the amount of salt in the dough instead of reducing the sugar to help balance out the sweetness.

10. do i have to chill the dough to make these mini chocolate chip cookies ?

    – i would highly recommend chilling the mini chocolate chip cookie dough before baking it. this cookie dough is somewhat sticky, so chilling it in the fridge will help it firm up a little and make it easier to handle. chilling the dough in the fridge will also help enhance the flavours and reduce spread in the oven, so i would recommend it if you have the time.

11. can i make these mini chocolate chip cookies ahead of time ?

    – you can definitely make these mini chocolate chip cookies ahead of time, as a longer chill time will enhance the flavours further. i would recommend making the dough ahead of time, splitting into equal sized cookie dough balls, storing it in the fridge or freezer, and then baking the cookies fresh when needed.

    – if you store the mini chocolate chip cookie dough balls in the freezer, you’ll need to freeze them flat on a tray first so that they don’t freeze together. then, once frozen, you can transfer them to a freezer bag. you can also bake them straight from frozen, but bear in mind that you might need to bake them for a little longer than stated in the recipe if baking from frozen.

12. how long will these mini chocolate chip cookies stay fresh ?

    – as long as you store any leftover mini chocolate chip cookies in an airtight container at room temperature, they should stay crunchy for 3-4 days.

13. can i make these mini chocolate chip cookies without baking soda ?

    – although it’s possible to make cookies without baking soda, it will have an impact on the texture and appearance of the cookies. baking soda helps cookies spread and brown properly. if you make these mini chocolate chip cookies without baking soda, you might get cookies that are denser, cakier and less golden. i would recommend using baking soda as stated. i do not recommend swapping the baking soda for baking powder.

recipe