Café-Style Chocolate Chip Cookies

golden brown and glossy, thick and gooey in the center, and caramelized and crunchy underneath

Chocolate chip cookies are one of my favorites, and while I'll eat almost any kind, I’ve finally come to a recipe that replicates my ideal café-style cookie. These cookies are thick, deeply golden brown, and mostly underbaked in the center—so when they cool, the inside tastes like chilled, caramel-like cookie dough. This recipe is also made with half regular brown sugar, and half turbinado sugar, which adds a really nice yet subtle crunch (read more about that below).

A key step in this recipe is cooking the butter and sugars together before mixing them with the dry ingredients. This caramelizes the sugars slightly, creating a richer flavor and leaving you with a beautifully crisp, caramelized bottom. Additionally, when sugar is well-dissolved in the dough (especially from melted butter or cooking the butter and sugar together), it can create a smoother, shinier surface as the cookies bake, which was one of my goals for this recipe.

Although I usually prefer a recipe with minimal waiting time (technically, you could bake these right away), chilling the dough makes the biggest difference. Letting it cool until fully solidified prevents excessive spreading and ensures a perfectly thick, chewy cookie with just the right texture.