These high altitude chocolate chip cookies are my holy grail, the ones I bring to potlucks, new parents, and school fundraisers. I’ve worked on this recipe for years, fine tuning and tweaking and tasting. They NEVER never fail to get raves.
People have strong opinions about chocolate chip cookies, and can be divided roughly into crispy vs. soft/chewy camps. My preferred cookie is one that’s soft and chewy inside, with a delicately crisp exterior and lots of chocolate and vanilla flavor. That’s what this one is. The addition of mini chocolate chips contributes not just to an adorable appearance, but ensures plenty of chocolate in every bite (personally, I also just prefer the texture of the tiny chips). If you prefer big chips, by all means substitute them, or even hand-chop a good bar of chocolate.
Put a plate of them on the table, drop the mic, and walk away. Marriage proposals may follow.
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Best High-Altitude Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Prep Time: 15 min
- Cook Time: 15
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 36 cookies 1x
- Category: Sweets, High Altitude
Description
These cookies are chewy inside and slightly crisp on the outside; delightfully buttery and full of tiny, melty little chips that ensure plenty of chocolate in each bite. This receipe works beautifully at elevations of 5,000 – 10,000 feet.
Ingredients
2 1/2 cups (11 oz) all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup (8 oz / 2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup (4 oz) plus 2 TB granulated sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 TB vanilla extract (not imitation)
1 cup (8 oz) mini semi-sweet chocolate chips (or regular size chips, or roughly chopped chocolate)
Instructions
Preheat oven to 325° and set rack in middle of oven. Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper.
Combine flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside. With a hand or stand mixer, cream room-temperature butter and sugars together at med-high speed until very light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time; mix thoroughly after each. Add vanilla, scrape down bowl, and combine.
Add half the flour mixture and mix until mostly combined, then add remaining flour. Stop mixing when the flour is fully incorporated (don’t overbeat; it’ll make your cookies tough). Using a wooden spoon, fold in chocolate chips.
Using a medium cookie scoop, place 2-TB balls of dough on the baking sheet, about 2 inches apart. Bake for 13-15 minutes, until the bottoms are lightly browned and the tops look slightly undone. Remove, let cool on pan for a couple of minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack. Eat at least one while warm to make sure they’re okay (rule in my house is that the cook gets the first hot, oozey one straight from the pan, but feel free to exercise restraint if you must). Once cool, store in an airtight container for up to a week (they start getting a bit dry after a couple days, but they rarely last that long in my house).
Notes
… Bring your butter and eggs to room temperature. Trust. Doing so will ensure that your ingredients can be fully combined and aerated without any cold clumps floating around. Tip: to quickly bring eggs to room temperature, submerge them in a glass of warm (not hot) water for about 5 minutes.
… Be sure to use an oven thermometer to make sure you’ve got the right temp. I recently acquired a new oven and impatiently baked a batch of these beauties to break it in, only to have them spread and flop (leading me to lose my damn mind because this recipe always works for me). Turns out my oven was off by about 15 degrees. Please avoid this giant bummer by investing in a $6 oven thermometer.
I’ve tried to make cookies at high altitude so many times. This recipe is awesome. For the first time (ever!) I made delicious AND attractive cookies. Thank you! My family is impressed 🙂
*high five* That’s what I love to hear!!
Perfect recipe. Cookies came out perfect This is my go to recipe from now on..thank you!
Thanks so much, Christin! I’m so happy it worked for you.
Would this recipe work when making mini cookies?
Hi Amanda, yes, you could certainly make smaller cookies. Just keep an eye on them in the oven as they might cook a bit faster.
It worked perfectly, thank you!
Will these turn crispy if I cook them a little longer, or will they turn hard and dense? I’m trying to bake chocolate chip cookies for a friend who likes them crispy.
Hey Lindsay,
I honestly have never tried to make a crispy version of these so I can’t say for sure, but rather than baking them longer, I’d first try turning the oven up by 25 degrees so they bake a little faster but don’t dry out. Keep an eye on them so they don’t burn!
Also, you might check out my recipe for Salted Butter Chocolate Chunk Shortbread cookies. They are crisp and buttery and totally addictive.
Let me know how it goes!
My house smells delightful. What a great recipe! I added a bit if cinnamon, personal preference. This high altitude recipe WORKS!
Adding cinnamon is a fantastic idea – kind of a Mexican chocolate vibe? I’m gonna try that!
This is the third recipe of yours I have tried (high altitude french bread, high altitude pizza dough also), and the cookies turned out perfectly. And, I have never baked a cookie in my life until this batch! This has become our goto chocolate chip cookie recipe. Thank you for the recipes – the level of detail you include, with photos, along with your clear and concise writing style, make even novices like me look good!
Yay, Herb! Your words make me very happy. Keep on baking!
Robyn, do you have any recommendations for converting this recipe to a choc chip/oatmeal cookie? My brother is coming to visit and I was thinking of tailoring this to his taste for oatmeal in cookies.
Thanks – Herb Kober
Hi Herb! Check out my recipe for High Altitude Oatmeal Pecan Cookies. You can omit the pecans if you wish and add chocolate chips.
I made these in Denver and they were DELICIOUS! But… they fell flat. We are making them again, tonight, with an additional egg (based on your recommendations in the high altitude section), but I wondered if I should also increase oven temp or do one of the other recommendations since we are significantly lower than you.
Monica, you may have already tried some tweaks but I would also check two things: the temperature of your butter and your oven temperature. If butter is too soft, the dough can spread too much in the oven. Another approach is to refrigerate the dough for up to 24 hours before baking. Make sure you’re using an oven thermometer, too, as many ovens are off from their stated temperature by 15 or 20 degrees. Let me know if you have better luck next time!
Oven thermometer is a MUST.
Haven’t tried it yet! When you say high altitude, how high do you mean? I live at 7 thousand feet. Thanks in advance, I’m sure they will we great.
Hi Sarah, I test all my recipes at 9,600 feet.
I’m exactly at 9,600 feet and have been looking for a cookie recipe that works here. Trying this today! Thanks in advance fellow high altitude baker!
I’ve completed the dough process, and most other recipes I have used in the past have recommended for chilling the dough for a minimum of 12 hours before baking. If I do that, will it screw up the result? Same question about having used dk brown sugar instead of light. Most of the recipes I’ve seen say that dk brown sugar will yield a chewier cookie, and it’s all I had on hand. Have I done something terrible? lol
The theory is that refrigerating the dough for long periods will develop the flavor, and also lessen spreading. I haven’t tried refrigerating mine for more than a few hours, but it should be fine, so give it a try! Dark vs brown sugar shouldn’t make an appreciable difference.
Spectacular recipe!!
Thank you, Karen! 🙂
Best… ever!!!!!! Just peeeeeeerfect. Thank you!
💛
I’m cooking at 12,500ft elevation. Can you suggest any changes I would need to make to successfully make these cookies? They look delicious, and I’m so desperate for a cookie recipe that works at this altitude!
Rachel, the recipe may work as written, but if it needs further adjusting try increasing the flour by 2 TB and decreasing the sugars by 1TB each. Good luck!
Awesome! Since moving from sea level to the Rocky Mountains Inhave struggled with cookies. These turned out perefct! I used a very small scoop and still perfect. Nice and buttery flavor and amazing texture!
So glad they worked for you, April!
Thanks Robyn, they turned out perfectly. I make them big, but that’s OK. I live in Breck and will check back in with this site.
I’m so glad! I saw your IG story and they looked great!!
We love making this recipe! Have substituted dark brown sugar as well as white chocolate chips as needed and they’ve always turned out great. Cheers from Denver!
Fabulous! Great tweaks. 🙂
How do your recommend making premade chocolate chip cookies at high altitude?
Hi Deana, not sure I understand the question – do you mean making the dough in advance for baking later?
These are the absolute best chocolate cookie I have ever made! For my second batch, I added about a half cup of chopped pecans and they are so delicious. I live at 7K feet so I love that your recipes are already altitude adjusted. 🙂
So glad you loved them! If you like the pairing of chocolate and pecans, I highly recommend you try out my Giant Bakery-Style Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies. They are truly divine and rival this recipe as my favorite!
This recipe was amazing , I have never made chocolate chip cookies up at our cabin at +9600 feet and they turned out great. The only thing was the normal recipe (I make at 430feet )I make was a little sweeter, because both types of sugar were 3/4 cup and only one tsp of vanilla extract.
This recipe is for the perfect chocolate chip cookie baked at high altitude! Thank you very much.
Great cookie. We live in Ecuador at about 8300 feet. Baking can be difficult. This worked very well. Thank you.
Great news!
The cookies taste good, but they do not look pretty or stay together. Not sure where I went wrong, but they spread out super far. 2″ apart was not enough room. They are very very flat cookies but also gooey and fall apart. I feel like there is too much butter, as they are super greasy.
Way too much flour for low humidity environs. My first attempt failed
Oh WOW!! So easy to make, and so tasty! Finally a chocolate chip cookie that looks and tastes great. Thank you for this high altitude recipe. Can hardly wait to try some of your other ones!
Hello, have you made adjustments to this recipe in the last few months? My cookies are flat. I have been using this recipe for the last few years and they always come out perfectly. Did you change the baking soda amount?
I haven’t made any changes to the recipe. Is your baking soda fresh? If your cookies are spreading you might try refrigerating the dough for half an hour before baking.
Thank you for responding! I switched to target brand flour last summer. I started noticing my baked goods would fall flat. King Arthur’s flour is so expensive these days. I went back to King Arthur’s flour for Christmas baking and the cookies turned out perfect! Thank you for the wonderful recipes!
OK…I naively thought that MY chocolate chip cookie recipe was the best. But… I’ve had so much success with your recipes that I decided to try these.
Yum yum! These are my new go to! We’re at 9000 ft…these are delicious… With a great texture… And they look great too!! 😋
Tried to make a half recipe of this in the Denver suburbs. Unfortunately my cookies turned out flat and caramelized. I feel kinda embarrassed with myself, as I feel like I’m OK at following a recipe. Despite the look of the cookies, they still taste good 😊 – I read through other comments about the butter being too warm, about chilling the dough and about getting an oven thermometer. Will do all of them and try again when I get more chocolate chips.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for this amazing recipe. My cookies turned out beautifully. I am not a baker and began realizing lately that I need to follow high altitude recipes for baking. So, I truly appreciate you sharing this. I will pass this along to people I know.
Is 325 degree oven correct? Can I preheat to 350 and bake for a shorter time? Thank you.
Your recipe works perfectly in Lander, WY at 5358 ft elevation.
This is the best Toll House variation I’ve tasted.
Thanks for the help,