Recipe: Adjustments for making soft chocolate chip cookies

Are we talking about chocolate chip cookies? The typical recipe from the well-known chocolate company has been formulated to be a thin, crisp cookie.

Here are a few things to try to adapt the usual chocolate chip recipe...

Use butter-flavor shortening. It has a higher melting point than butter, and therefore the cookies spread less. A thinner cookie will always be a crisper (harder?) cookie.

Add a few additional tablespoons of flour, no more than about 1/4 cup, though. You could also experiment with cake flour, which has a lower gluten content and should produce a more tender cookie.

Contrary to the recipe instructions, have the chosen fat chilled, not at room temperature. And chill the dough thoroughly before baking. Colder dough will spread less.

Plain, ungreased cookie sheets will work better than insulated ones to prevent spreading. Use parchment paper to make removal from the sheet easier. Make sure they are completely cool before baking the next batch of dough.

Use fewer chocolate chips. Too many will cause the dough spread out more.

Slightly underbake the cookies. They continue to cook after removal from the oven, so if the edges are light brown and the center still looks slightly pale, they will be about right after cooling.

If none of these tips help, bake the dough as a "pan cookie" in a jelly roll pan; they will be softer than individual cookies.