Claire Saffitz’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
My favourite dessert recipe of all time
To start off, I just want to say this plainly: I love Claire Saffitz.
She’s the reason I truly started experimenting in the kitchen. The reason I stopped being afraid of technique. The reason baking shifted from something I followed to something I understood.
She is my Julia Child. So today, I want to talk about the first recipe of hers I ever tried, and why — if you love baking even a little — your cookbook arsenal should absolutely include Dessert Person.
The recipe? The chocolate chip cookie.
Ingredients you’ll need
This list is inspired by Claire’s method and video — familiar ingredients, used with intention.
2 sticks unsalted butter (227 g), cut into tablespoons
2 tablespoons heavy cream, half-and-half, or whole milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup dark brown sugar, packed
¾ cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs, cold from the refrigerator
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Bittersweet chocolate disks, half left whole, half coarsely chopped
Milk chocolate disks, half left whole, half coarsely chopped
Nothing here is complicated. Everything here is deliberate.
What goes into it (in spirit)
A generous amount of butter, treated with care.
A touch of cream or milk to restore balance after browning.
Flour, baking soda, and salt — nothing fancy, everything precise.
A mix of dark brown and granulated sugar for both depth and structure.
Cold eggs, straight from the fridge.
Good vanilla.
And crucially: two kinds of chocolate — bittersweet and milk — some left intact, some chopped down into what I now lovingly think of as chocolate dust.
Nothing here is revolutionary on its own.
What makes it special is how it’s used.
Techniques She Uses That I Adore
This is where the recipe truly shines.
Browning the butter
Not just for flavour, but for intention. You smell it, watch it change, wait for the exact moment. It teaches patience before you even start mixing.
Mixing chocolate textures
Whole disks, chopped chunks, and fine shards all in one dough. This creates layers — melted pools, little bites, caramelised edges. No two cookies taste exactly the same.
Freezing the dough overnight
This is non-negotiable.
I tested it. I baked part of the batch after just a few hours — then baked the rest the next day.
The difference was undeniable.
The overnight dough was:
More balanced
Better structured
Deeper in flavour
Perfectly crisp at the edges, soft at the centre
The earlier batch?
Too crispy. Burned too quickly. Didn’t hit the spot.
If there’s one thing this recipe taught me, it’s this:
time is an ingredient.
This cookie wasn’t just good.
It was instructive.
It taught me to trust technique, respect rest, and understand why something works — not just that it does.
And that’s exactly why Dessert Person isn’t just a cookbook. It’s a teacher.
Would I make it again?
I already have — many times. At this point, I’ve made this recipe about six times. Once for a friend while visiting her, where I batch-prepped the dough and stocked her freezer so she could bake one whenever she was feeling low.
That’s the kind of recipe this is.
The kind you return to. The kind you make for other people. The kind that becomes less about the cookie and more about care.
Yes, I’d make it again. And I probably already am.
A gentle note
This post is a personal reflection inspired by Claire Saffitz’s work and Dessert Person.
For the full recipe, exact measurements, and original method, I highly recommend visiting Claire’s channel or cookbook.
