No-chill Small-batch Chocolate Chip Cookies (2024)

This easy recipe for Small-batch Chocolate Chip Cookies makes six perfect cookies in 20 minutes.

I call these cookies my instant-gratification chocolate chip cookies because they go from cookie desire to cookie reality in 20 minutes.

The Best Small-batch Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

This recipe is designed to make the best chocolate chip cookies possible FAST. It uses melted butter so there is zero waiting time for butter to come to room temperature AND you don’t have to chill the dough.

So you can throw these cookies together with no planning needed and then pop them right into the oven.

It will make half-a-dozen chocolate chip cookies, and they come out soft, a little chewy, and packed full of gooey, melty chocolate chips.

How you choose to distribute those six cookies is up to you, though I vote for being a cookie monster and eating two for breakfast and then hiding the rest of them at the back of your freezer so you don’t have to share.

How to Make Small-batch Chocolate Chip Cookies

1. Start with melted and slightly cooled butter. Your butter should NOT be hot to the touch as it can cause bits of your egg to cook if it’s too warm. Mix the butter with granulated sugar and brown sugar.
2. Add the yolk from a large egg and vanilla. Make sure you’re working with a large egg or you might not have enough liquid in your dough for it all to come together.
3. Add flour, measured precisely, and the other dry ingredients. Flour measurement is really important in small-batch recipes. Measure by weight or using the spoon and sweep method (stir the flour in your container to fluff it up and then spoon it into your measuring cup, sweep excess off with the flat of a knife). Too much flour can lead to a dry, sandy dough.
4. Add chocolate chips. This recipe calls for semi-sweet, but you can use any chips you prefer (or add M&Ms and make ).
5. Bake. Do not overbake your cookies! Bake just until the cookies look set and then pull them from the oven. They might still seem a little gooey, but they’ll continue cooking on the hot baking sheet as it cools.

Tips and Tricks

Can I freeze these cookies? Yes! Just store the cookies in an airtight container or freezer bag and they’ll keep for up to 2 months in the freezer. Give them five minutes at room temperature to soften a bit before eating or enjoy them frozen on a hot summer day.

Can I double the recipe? Yes! If you want to double the recipe, you can do so with no changes or use one whole egg instead of two yolks.

Cookie Troubleshooting

If you’re having trouble with your cookies, here are a couple troubleshooting tips that might help:

My dough is dry/crumbly: This is usually caused by too much flour in the dough (make sure you’re measuring it by weight or the spoon and sweep method) or it can happen when you get a particularly small egg yolk, so there isn’t enough liquid for everything to mix well. To fix crumbly dough, add a little milk or water by the half teaspoon, just enough so that everything comes together and there are no dry bits of flour at the bottom of the bowl, and your dough should be good to go.

My cookies didn’t spread: There are a couple of things that can cause this. One is (again) because there’s too much flour in the dough. Next time make sure to measure by weight or the spoon and sweep method. Changing the recipe, particularly cutting the amount of sugar, can also cause the cookies not to spread as much as they should.

More Small-batch Cookie Recipes

• Small-batch Peanut Butter Cookies
• Small-batch Oatmeal Cookies
• Perfect Small-batch Sugar Cookies
• Small-batch Gingerbread Cookies
• Small-batch Buckeye Brownie Cookies

Or check out my entire Small-batch Cookie Recipe Archive.

This recipe uses just one egg yolk. Check out these Egg White Recipes for ideas on what to do with the leftover egg white.

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