Best Ina Garten Chocolate Chip Cookies (Recipe, Tips & Video) (2024)

Everyone loves Ina Garten chocolate chip cookies and you can have them ready to eat in under 1 hour.

Crunchy on the outside, moist and soft middle and filled with chocolate chunks. They are delicious, quick & easy to make and look great!

These are Ina Garten chocolate chunk cookies, with Maltesers instead of walnuts.

They took me less than 1 hour to make from the start to eating.

Keep reading for my top 2 cookie making tips.

The tips will help you regardless of what cookie recipe you’re making.

The full recipe with detailed instructions are below.

If you prefer to learn by watching, watch the entire process from end to end in my short video linked below under the recipe. (Its less than 2 minutes watch time).

There are 4 other Ina Garten chocolate chip cookies recipes below the main recipe if you want to consider some other options.

3 Reasons Why You Will Love These Ina Garten Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ina Garten cookies have thousands of reviews and likes online and there are countless imitations of her recipes.

You will love Ina’s chocolate chunk cookies because:

1. They use chocolate chunks instead of chocolate chips
   • The chunks change the texture so you have more chocolate to sink your teeth into.
   • Using semisweet chocolate gives a richer, more decadent chocolate flavor.
2. They are a 1 bowl throw together creation
   • Everything gets thrown into 1 large bowl and mixed together.
   • A hand mixer and a spatula are about the only kitchen tools you will need.
   • You dont even need to get out and dirty your stand mixer.
3. You can be eating fresh cookies in about 50 minutes
   • 10 minutes of preparation, 15 minutes refrigerating, 15 minutes baking, 10 minutes cooling (if you can wait that long!).

2 Tips To Make Ina Garten Chocolate Chip Cookies

These tips will help you to deal with the most common problems people have when baking cookies.

They will also help you lift your cookie making game, whether they are Ina Garten cookies or a different cookie recipe.

The most common problems people have when baking cookies are:

1. Cookies not spreading during baking OR
2. My cookies are flat.

There can be dozens of reasons why your cookies aren’t spreading or are too flat.

My 2 top tips for the perfect Ina Garten chocolate chip cookies are:

1. Have the right flour to butter ratio

Too much flour and your cookies might not flatten out during baking.

Too much butter and eggs and your cookies might flatten too much.

If in doubt, have a look at a proven recipe, like the Ina Garten chocolate chunk cookies recipe below.

Following a proven recipe and using a kitchen scale is a good way to make sure your ingredient ratios are right.

2. Control the temperature of your cookie dough

Don’t worry, this is not an exact science and you don’t need to be too precise.

Ultimately, if your ingredients are too cold, your cookies are less likely to spread during baking.

If your ingredients are too warm, your cookies are likely to spread too thin and you will end up with flat, unappealing cookies.

To manage this, keep the following in mind:

• Use room temperature butter and eggs. The butter should be firm but soft enough so you can press an indent into it. I dont recommend microwaving the butter because it will heat unevenly.

• Don’t overwork your cookie dough. If you’re using an electric mixer or stand mixer, only mix for long enough to cream your butter or combine your ingredients. Mixing too long will increase the temperature of the ingredients.

• Refrigerate the cookie dough before baking. This is particularly important if your kitchen is warm. (See the photos below. The same batch of cookie dough baked at the same time on the same oven rack. The cookies on the left were in the refrigerator for 5 minutes before baking. The cookies on the right were in the refrigerator for 10 minutes before).

• Use room temperature oven trays and line your oven trays with parchment paper. The parchment paper also helps to make sure the cookies dont stick to the tray

• Do not use heavy cast iron baking trays. Cast iron trays hold a lot of heat and can overcook the bottom of your cookies.

If these dont work and you are still having issues with your cookies, you might need to consider other factors like the temperature of your oven.

The Most Popular Barefoot Contessa Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ina Garten’s most famous chocolate chip cookies are called Ina Garten chocolate chunk cookies.

They are similar to other Ina Garten cookies just that they are made with roughly chopped chunks of bittersweet chocolate as opposed to regular chocolate chips.

The chopped chocolate has a higher melting point compared to regular choc chips so you end up with chunky bites of bittersweet chocolate combined with the crunch of the cookie.

The full recipe is listed below.

Ina Garten Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Recipe by Barbara HuntCourse: RecipesDifficulty: Easy

Servings

15

servings

Prep time

25

minutes

Cooking time

25

minutes

Calories

300

kcal

Ina Garten chocolate chunk cookies are crunchy on the outside, moist and soft in the middle, filled with decadent chocolate chunks. A perfectly quick, easy and delicious treat.

Ingredients

• ½ pound unsalted butter (at room temperature)

• 1 cup light brown sugar

  See Also

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• ½ cup granulated sugar

• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 2 large eggs (at room temperature)

• 2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 ½cups chopped walnuts (I used Maltesers instead)

• 1 ¼ pounds semisweet chocolate chunks

Directions

• Make The Cookie Dough
• Preheat oven to 350f. In a large bowl, cream the butter and two sugars until light and fluffy.
• To the creamed butter, add the vanilla, then the eggs, one at a time and mix well.
• To the wet mix, sift in the flour, baking soda and salt. Mix on low speed until just combined.
• Fold in the walnuts and chocolate chunks.
• Bake The Cookies
• Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Place scoops of dough on the paper. (Use a spoon or an ice cream scoop to form the scoops. Leave space between each to expand)
• Refrigerate the cookie scoops for 15 minutes.
• Bake for 15 minutes – the cookies will still be very soft.
• Remove from oven and let cool slightly on the tray, then transfer to a wire rack. (Cookies will harden once fully cooled).

Recipe Video

https://youtu.be/Uu85jMWSZuYVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Ina Garten Chocolate Chip Cookies With Chocolate Chunks and Maltesers For Extra Fun (https://youtu.be/Uu85jMWSZuY)

Other Ina Garten Cookies Recipes

I have listed the next 4 most popular Ina Garten chocolate chip recipes below the tips in this post.

If you choose one of these other recipes I still recommend you take a minute to skim through my top cookie making tips first.

If you’re not decided on chocolate I have also covered the best of Ina’s shortbread cookie recipes.

If you are looking for a baked treat to have with a coffee, but want something a little more fancy you could try this rugelach recipe from Ina Garten.

Rugelach are a lot more involved than simple cookies.

They are certainly more fancy if serving at an event or want to impress your friends.

Lastly, although its not a cookie, if you want to try something a little different and a lot decadent, you could consider making an Ina Garten bittersweet chocolate tart.

Other Ina Garten Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipes

Below is a list of 4 other popular Ina Garten chocolate chip cookies recipes to give you inspiration.

Number 3 is my favorite – Ina Garten’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

I love the chewy texture that oats bring to cookies.

If you’re not committed to an Ina Garten recipe, see my list of 17 delicious chocolate chip cookies recipes.

There is something in there for everyone.

Now for the 4 next best Ina Garten chocolate chip cookies recipes.

1. Ina Garten’s Giant Crinkled Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

These chocolate chip cookies stand apart from the others thanks to their crinkled texture.

This makes them extra crisp around the edges and adds a bit more visual ‘character’.

You get crisp edges with chewy, soft centers, filled with rich chocolate chips – or you can use chocolate chunks for a more chocolatey feel.

They use a relatively small list of common ingredients and are as easy to make as any other Ina Garten cookies recipe.

2. Ina Garten’s White Chocolate Chunk Cookies Recipe

Using white chocolate is an easy way to vary Ina’s original chocolate chunk cookies recipe.

You get the extra sweetness that comes from using white chocolate.

The rest of the recipe is the same as the regular chocolate chunk recipe.

As with the regular recipe, you can cut a block of white chocolate into chunks or use white chocolate chips if you have them.

Using chopped chocolate chunks will give you a chunkier more chocolatey texture, compared to the chips which will melt more and will generally be softer to bite.

3. Ina Garten’s Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookie Recipe

Our next pick is Ina Garten’s oatmeal chocolate chunk cookies.

Very similar to the Barefoot Contessa’s other choc chunk cooke recipes, with the addition of old fashioned oats and a sprinkling of sea salt flakes.

Adding oats makes cookies slightly chewier in texture and less dry and crumbly.

On top of that, adding oats increases the fiber content of the cookies too.

More fiber cant be a bad thing for your diet.

Sea salt flakes are then sprinkled over the cookie dough immediately before baking.

This adds a saltiness to compliment the sweetness from the cookie and bitterness from the chocolate (especially is you use bittersweet chocolate).

The original recipe calls for a particular type of salt, called fleur de sel.

This can be expensive and hard to find.

Ultimately you are looking for larger salt flakes, as opposed to finely ground salt.

Any good quality sea salt flakes will do the trick.

4. Ina Garten’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies Recipe

If you liked the nuttiness of adding walnuts to the original Ina Garten choc chunk cookies, you’ll love this recipe!

This recipe adds 1 cup of smooth peanut butter into the mix, giving each cookie a perfect nuttiness alongside the rich chocolate.