Small Batch Chocolate Chip Cookies
These small batch chocolate chip cookies are perfect for when you’re craving a cookie, but don’t want to make a full batch. This simple recipe yields just 8 to 10 cookies and includes several recipe variations too!
Do you ever find yourself craving a chocolate chip cookie, but not wanting to make a full batch? If so, I think you’re going to love this small batch chocolate chip cookie recipe!
I originally published this recipe in 2014 and it quickly became a reader favorite and one of mine too. Over the past few months I’ve been working on a cookie cookbook (yes, a cookbook is finally happening!) and I knew that this is one recipe that needed to be included in it. So today I wanted to update this recipe to make it even better and and share it with you again.
Why You Will Love This Recipe
- Requires only one bowl
- Makes just 8 to 10 cookies
- The cookies turn out super soft and chewy
- Just 10 minutes of dough chilling time
This recipe also makes a fantastic base for other cookies, so I’ve included instructions for how to make these cookies 4 different ways!
Recipe Ingredients
These easy small batch chocolate chip cookies use similar ingredients to my regular chocolate chip cookies with a few minor adjustments. Here’s what you will be using:
- Unsalted Butter: I highly recommend sticking with unsalted butter in this recipe. Since it makes such a small amount of cookies, this will allow you to control the amount of salt going into them.
- Sugar: You’ll be using a mixture of brown sugar and granulated sugar. The brown sugar adds moisture and creates a chewy cookie while the granulated sugar helps them spread.
- Egg Yolk: Since this recipe doesn’t make too many cookies, a whole egg is far too much. An egg yolk is the perfect amount to bind the dough together and add some moisture to it too. You can use the leftover egg white in another recipe like my candied pecans.
- Pure Vanilla Extract: For a little extra flavor.
- All-Purpose Flour: This provides the structure for your cookies so that they don’t fall apart when you pick them up. I found that 1/2 cup of flour wasn’t quite enough and 2/3 cup was just a bit too much, so this recipe calls for 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon of flour.
- Baking Soda & Salt: The baking soda helps lift the cookies and the salt enhances the flavors.
- Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips: When I originally posted this recipe, I only used 1/3 cup of chocolate chips. I’ve increased the amount to 1/2 cup so that you get some chocolate chips in every single bite!
How To Make A Small Batch Of Chocolate Chip Cookies
Once you’ve gathered your ingredients, it’s time to prepare the cookies. To start, preheat your oven to 350°F (177°C) and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Set the baking sheet aside and prepare your cookie dough.
To make the cookie dough, you’ll beat the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together for a minute or two or until they’re well combined. You can also skip the mixer and just cream the butter and sugars together with a fork, so feel free to do whatever is easiest for you! Next, mix in the egg yolk and pure vanilla extract.
Once the wet ingredients are thoroughly combined, add the flour, baking soda, and salt and mix them in until just combined. Then, add the semi-sweet chocolate chips (or your favorite mix-ins) and fold them into the cookie dough. At this point, you want to cover the cookie dough tightly and place it in the freezer to chill for 10 minutes.
After the 10 minutes, remove the cookie dough from the freezer and use a 1.5 tablespoon cookie scoop to scoop the cookie dough onto your baking sheet. You should get about 8 to 10 cookies depending on how small or large you scoop them, but I usually get about 10.
Then, just bake the cookies for 10 t0 12 minutes or until they’re lightly browned around the edges and the tops are set. I suggest letting them cool on the baking sheet for 5 to 10 minutes, but they’re delicious right out of the oven too!
Recipe Variations
Want to try these cookies another way? You can leave out the 1/2 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips and mix in the following ingredients for each type of cookie:
- White Chocolate Macadamia Nut: Add 1/3 cup white chocolate chips and 1/4 cup of chopped macadamia nuts
- Chocolate M&M: Add 1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips and 1/4 cup of mini M&M’s
- Funfetti: Add 1/2 cup of white chocolate chips and 1 tablespoon of sprinkles
Baking Tips
- When measuring your flour, make sure to use the spoon and level method. Too much flour can lead to cookies that don’t spread very much in the oven.
- Feel free to use milk chocolate or dark chocolate chips in place of the semi-sweet chocolate chips.
- Don’t skip chilling the cookie dough in the freezer for 10 minutes. This will help ensure that the cookies don’t spread too much in the oven.
More Small Batch Recipes To Try!
- Chocolate Mug Cake
- Apple Crisp For Two
- Small Batch Peanut Butter Cookies
- Single Serving Deep Dish Chocolate Chip Cookie
- Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes For Two
Small Batch Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup (60 grams) unsalted butter softened
- 1/4 cup (50 grams) light brown sugar packed
- 2 tablespoons (25 grams) granulated sugar
- 1 large egg yolk at room temperature
- 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon (70 grams) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup (90 grams) semi-sweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (177°C). Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat and set aside.
- In a medium-sized mixing bowl using an electric mixer, beat the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together for 1 to 2 minutes or until well combined.
- Mix in the egg yolk and vanilla extract until fully combined, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
- Add the flour, baking soda, and salt and mix until just combined. Then, mix in the semi-sweet chocolate chips on low-speed until fully incorporated into the cookie dough.
- Cover tightly and transfer to the freezer to chill for 10 minutes.
- Using a 1.5 tablespoon cookie scoop, scoop the cookie dough onto the prepared baking sheet, making sure to leave a little room between each one.
- Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are lightly golden brown and the tops are set.
- Remove the cookies from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet for 5 to 10 minutes, then transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
Hi. Going into this recipe I had high hopes because of the views. The batter looked great and my brother and I were so excited to try them. Once they came out of the oven, they were not soft. The recipe says that they are supposed to look a little underdone but these looked much overdone. I triple checked the recipe to make sure we didn’t miss a step, and we didn’t. 350 degrees F and 11 minutes. Right between the time of 10-2 min like the recipe says. I feel like we should have baked them from 5-8 minutes which is almost cutting the time by half. I am very disappointed.
Sorry you had trouble with the recipe, Bella. Did you make sure to measure out 2 tablespoons of cookie dough for each one? If you happened to scoop them smaller, that could explain why they were overdone. Another reason could have been that your oven temperature is too hot, have you checked it with an oven thermometer?
I am single, and fairly new to cookies. This is a great base recipe to experiment with cookies. I’ve been able to play with this recipe so much, it has been fun! I’ve mixed in cocoa powder, any chips around, honey, molasses, oats…I’ve used this is a base recipe for “that thing in the back of the pantry” so many times.
I’ve come out of this with several cookie combinations. No batch has been bad straight out of the oven…a few did not survive room temperature. But most have been fantastic.
I did exactly as the recipe said and I though they came out great! I did put them in the toaster oven so they only took about 8 minutes to cook. They tasted like tollhouse cookies to me. They are slightly dense but I personally liked them that way. That might of also been because the cookies I made were kind of thick except for two of them. It made 8 cookies but I could of done a better job at distributing the dough and making them all an equal size. It was easy to make them and an easy cleanup. Thank you for sharing!
Perfect cookies, thank you for making this time a little better!!
So glad you enjoyed the cookies, Shannon!
These cookies were so good I would definitely make them again! I didn’t add that extra tbsp of flour because I didn’t have anymore and they still turned out very nice. The batch made up to 8 cookies. Would definitely recommend! Ps. The dough may look like sand but that’s perfectly fine just roll it up into little balls and I promise it’ll stick.
WOW. These are delicious.
I doubled the recipe and froze half of the batter for later : )
This recipe didn’t really work for me. I’m not sure what went wrong, but the dough came out super moist and gooey so I tried adding more flour and after they cooked it did not turn out well. I put them in the freezer too and it didn’t work. I must have done something wrong
Sorry you had trouble with the recipe. Did you make any adjustments to it?
Hello, 2nd time making this recipe, with similar results. Cookies are super flat and hard.
This time I used less sugar, put the dough in the freezer for 10 minutes (the dough was super hard when I took it out) & made smaller cookies but they still didn’t turn out. We ate a couple and threw the rest away. To me, I feel the recipe needs more flour. Not sure how others are having such good results lol. Think from now on I’ll use 1/4 of my traditional recipe.
Sorry you’re having trouble with the recipe, Christine. Are you warming up the butter or letting it soften at room temperature? If the butter is too warm that could cause the cookies to flatten. You can also try adding 1-2 tablespoons more flour and that should help.
I LOVED THESE ❤️ CHOCOLATE chip cookies they came out amazing ? my son Angel loves chocolate chip cookies ?❤️? ? thanks Priscilla
These cookies came out sooo good. I love that i only made 8. Next time i may double for a bigger batch. Thank you! I look forward to trying new recipes.
I added a bit of water because it had the texture of balled up sand and wasn’t really sticking to itself. I baked it in my toaster oven (on a dark baking sheet with no parchment). I put 10 hours on my timer instead of minutes. I put them on a cooling rack after a minute instead of 10. Even after all of this the end result was perfect. I have tried other small-batch cookie recipes and this is the best. I will make it again, thanks!
Hi can I replace flour to whole wheat flour?
You can replace half of the flour with whole wheat flour. If you replace all of it, the cookies may turn out a bit dry.
I doubled it, because I needed more than eight, but not dozens of cookies. It’s just my husband and myself and I don’t need to have so many around!
Tastes really good! Loved how many cookies it made! I left them in to long so they got really crispy when they cooled but still really good :):)
I accidentally put an entire egg instead of egg yolk. Hoping it doesn’t mess it up too much 🙁
The cookies may be a little cakier. Hopefully they still turned out okay for you!
Thank you so much for this recipe. Your recipe is quite foolproof, I actually mixed the ingredients in the wrong order but it still came out yummy!
This recipe is literally perfect. These might be the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever made. I literally didn’t change a thing and they were flawless. It made 10 cookies instead of 8 but I am not complaining. I had to stop myself from eating all of them. Omg I’m spreading the good word of these cookies everywhere.
Best cookie ever
Hi is the 375 in degrees ℉?
It’s 350°F (177°C).
I’ve been looking at this recipe for a couple of days now. The ratings are all so great. I think I’m going to try them as bars and see how they turn out. I will bake them alittle longer. I’ll let you know how they turn out. Wish me luck?
I’d love to hear how they turn out, Rebecca!
This is the best small batch recipe I’ve ever made !
These were delicious! One suggestion: if you you want your cookies to be crispy on the edges, I suggest baking them for 15-17 minutes instead of 10-12.
These cookies turned out fabulous! As a guy in my forties living alone, I don’t need any more cookies than this recipe makes. That was my whole point in seeking out a small batch recipe. To my pleasant surprise, these cookies turned out way better than the average flat and thin chocolate chip cookie. I really like that they have some thickness to them. Pretty sure chilling the dough helps achieve that desired effect. And they taste SO good. Thanks for the recipe! Now I wish I had a regular size batch recipe for when I want to make cookies for my nieces and nephew. Any chance I could get that ?
Glad you liked the cookies, Douglas! I do have a full batch chocolate chip cookie recipe here. It will make about 4 dozen cookies, but you can cut it in half to make less.
This recipe always makes the perfect cookies!!
Very yummy..just the right amount of bite!! I kept put some dough to add my own add ins! Walnuts or pecans!
I’ve made these several times now. It’s my go-to recipe and always comes out fantastic!
Hi,
I really like this recipe! I wanted cookies, but not a million. I followed instructions, however, my cookies came out cake like. My oven could be the culprit … other than that, why would they be cake cookie? Thanks again for the recipe!
Did you make sure to spoon and level your flour? Too much flour can create cakey cookies.
This is my go to recipe for chocolate chip cookies! I change only one thing and add two egg yolks instead of one. Or if you have a duck egg, one duck egg yolk makes for phenomenal cookies!
Finally the perfect chocolate chip cookie! I used just the half cup of flour, and left out the extra tablespoon, and for me it was perfect. I like my chocolate chip cookie on the flat and chewy side with plenty of chocolate in every bite so I really loved this. Most recipes make a doughy moundy cookie which I do not like. I may just make three dozen next time! Thank you!!
This cookies are amazing!!! I have been looking for a good recipe for a while now. Saw this one today so thought I would try. They did not disappoint! Followed directions exactly and they came out perfect. Will definately be my go to recipe from now on.
Perfect recipe during these times stuck at home. 8 cookies was enough for a family of three. A quick and fun recipe. Thank you for posting!
Delicious, added some oats too ?