Chewy Cookie Tips

I found these through Something Awful's subforum, Goons with Spoons. I haven't tried any of them but one so I can't give them my personal seal of approval, but I will definitely be trying some of them in the near future!

Melt you butter, use more brown sugar than white, and chill the dough before baking. I also tend to use a higher gluten flour and overmix it a bit when I want them super chewy.- tonedef131

It's very, very easy to overbake cookies because they never look done when you take them out. People are often worried that they're going to poison someone if their cookies are still chewy in the middle, but unless you bite into a freshly-baked cookie to find the dough still cool in the centre I don't think you have anything to worry about. I'm open to being corrected on that, though, because I'm going on "I've never gotten sick from my cookies and neither has anyone else" here.-bombhand

A note about chilling the dough. The reason for doing this is to solidify the melted butter. You can even freeze the cookie pucks and thaw them in the fridge before baking. At work we don't even use white sugar at all, just brown sugar. As for getting sick from eating a slightly underdone cookie, it's possible but unlikely. Using pasturized eggs will make even the raw dough totally safe to eat.-stphrz

An extra egg yolk can sometimes help, which is why a lot of these recipes call for one whole egg and one yolk. Substituting shortening for some of your butter, while not as tasty, helps to keep the cookies chewy by preventing spread in the oven. Make sure you're thoroughly creaming your butter and sugar. Again, echoing above, force yourself to pull them out of the oven when the middles still look pretty underdone. Don't worry about getting sick.-Lets Make Fudge

Try dark brown sugar instead of light brown sugar. -Isochronus

High moisture content is what makes cookies soft and chewy. From what I understand, the recipe, baking time, and temperature are what you need to adjust in order to retain moisture.

As for the recipe: Binding the water in butter, eggs, and brown sugar (as previously mentioned) with flour slows its evaporation. A little extra flour in your dough also means a stiffer mixture which will spread out less resulting in thicker cookies (and the moisture of which will evaporate slower). Also, bigger spoonfuls of dough will clearly make moister cookies than smaller spoonfuls of dough.

As for temp and baking time: Baking the cookies at a higher temp and for a shorter period of time will also help to keep them moist. Most imoportantly - don't overbake! Remove the cookies from the oven as soon as the cookies outter rim is browned and the center 1/4 or so is pale in comparison.

One of my favorite soft chocolate chip cookies reciepe also includes a box of vanilla pudding mix. I'm not sure if it's just for taste, but it seems to also really help in retaining the cookies chewiness.-Jayelle

This idea sounded crazy when my girlfriend suggested it, but it worked pretty well:

Instead of a cookie sheet, try baking your cookies in a muffin pan. In addition to being perfectly round, the resulting cookies have a smaller diameter but are much thicker, meaning that they retain more moisture. At least, I'm pretty sure that's hot it works. Regardless of the behind it, you do get soft, moist, delicious cookies.-Mogalike (Now THIS I actually HAVE tried, and they turned out delicious! My husband and I call these mookies.)

If you try the muffin tin idea (a good one btw) be sure to use a good non stick tin (or one lined with parchment, not baking cups) and no grease of any kind. Unlike muffin batter, dense cookie dough will not absorb much grease. Greasy cookies are gross :p-stphrz (True, my muffin pan is non-stick)