If you love a thin, crisp chocolate chip cookie, this is the one. Buttery, golden, and packed with toffee-like flavor, these Tate’s-style cookies bake up with that satisfying snap that gets rave reviews.
If you love Tate’s thin and crispy chocolate chip cookies, you’re absolutely going to flip for this recipe. The cookies bake up super crisp and buttery, and taste even better than the store-bought ones!
What readers are saying about these thin and crispy cookies
➡ Ummm, okay — this recipe is from heaven. Thank you!
➡ Sue. I just deleted every other chocolate chip cookie from my Pinterest! This recipe is the best I’ve ever made.
➡ I’ve been searching for a favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe for YEARS…this is it!
➡ These are PERFECT! They’re actually better than Tate’s.
What’s your chocolate chip cookie style? Soft and plush, classic, or thin and crisp? If most of us are honest, we’ll take a chocolate chip cookie any way we can get it ~ but thin and crispy chocolate chip cookies have been on my radar ever since I grabbed a bag of Tate’s at the supermarket. They’re light, snappy, buttery, and dangerously easy to keep eating. I’m so glad I nailed this recipe because mine have that same delicate crunch, with even better homemade flavor.
The secrets to a truly thin and crispy chocolate chip cookie
Most of the time I’m aiming for a nice chewy cookie, like my Favorite Chewy Ginger Cookies or my Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies. But here the goal is different: crisp all the way through.
- Thin, crispy cookies usually have a higher proportion of butter and sugar, which encourages the dough to spread in the oven. As the cookies bake, that thin layer sets into a golden, crunchy texture with lots of buttery toffee flavor.
- The other key is baking them long enough for moisture to evaporate ~ pale cookies will stay bendy, while golden cookies cool into that crisp snap.
- And don’t judge them too soon ~ they’ll be soft when they first come out of the oven, then crisp up as they cool.
A few ingredient notes
The ingredient list will look familiar because it’s basically the same as most chocolate chip cookies. The difference here will be in the proportions.
- Quality counts: Use good-quality butter for baking any cookie recipe. Cheap brands add water and won’t bake up as well.
- Ditto for your vanilla extract: quality really matters here; the flavor of discount brands is flat and artificial.
- Cinnamon! A tiny amount of cinnamon adds a je ne sais quoi to my thin and crispy cookies, many readers have commented on this!
Tips for baking Tate’s-style cookies
Baking details that matter
- Be precise; don’t be tempted to mess with the ingredients or amounts.
- Line baking sheets with parchment.
- Bake one pan at a time.
- Make sure your oven temperature is accurate.
Getting the spread right
- Don’t chill the dough. Chilled dough won’t spread as well.
- Use a slightly heaped tablespoon of dough per cookie. It looks small, but the cookies spread quite a bit.
- Give them plenty of room on the baking sheet. I can only fit 5–6 cookies at a time.
- If your first tray spreads too thin or looks greasy, stir 1–2 tablespoons of flour into the remaining dough before baking the next tray.
Cooling and storing crispy cookies
- Let the cookies cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet before moving them. They need that time to firm up.
- Transfer them carefully to a rack and let them cool completely.
- Store loosely covered at room temperature once fully cool. A cookie tin is ideal ~ you want to protect them without trapping moisture.
- If they lose a little crunch, pop them in a 300°F oven for a few minutes, then let them cool again.
So which is better, Tate’s or my cookies?
I have the utmost respect for Tate’s, and in fact our ingredient lists are exactly the same. But if you love to bake, these homemade cookies make sense on a few different levels.
They’re cheaper! You could spend up to $18 buying the same amount of cookies.
Homemade cookies can use higher quality ingredients (butter, chocolate) than commercial recipes baked at scale.
The flavor of homemade cookies always trumps store-bought, no matter how good the store-bought ones are.
And once you’ve mastered this thin and crispy chocolate chip cookie, you can have them anytime you want, and you can customize them in all sorts of ways. I’m planning to tackle Tate’s coconut crisps next 🙂
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Thin and Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Video
Equipment
- parchment paper
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature and soft but not melted
- 3/4 cup white sugar
- 3/4 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
- 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour, measured carefully: fluff, spoon into the cup, and level off. Too much flour will make chewier cookies.
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 large egg
- 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Note: the parchment paper is important for preventing sticking, and getting the right texture in these cookies. Don't substitute silicone mats.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer or with electric beaters, cream together the butter and sugars until well combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon.
- Add the egg and vanilla to the butter mixture, and mix until well combined.
- Add the flour mixture to the bowl in two batches, mixing after each addition just until everything is combined. Add the chocolate chips, and mix briefly once more to incorporate them evenly.
- Scoop the dough into portions a little larger than 1 tablespoon, then roll into balls. Space them evenly on your baking sheet, leaving about 2-3 inches between each cookie to allow for spreading in the oven.
- Bake for about 14-15 minutes until the cookies are a rich golden brown.
- Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes. They will be very soft when they come out of the oven but will crisp up as they cool. Transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Store loosely covered at room temperature once completely cool.
Notes
Nutrition
More thin and crispy cookie recipes
Double Chocolate Thin and Crispy Cookies
Double chocolate thin and crispy cookies are just like the Tate’s cookies you love (but hate to pay for!)
Thin and Crispy White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies
Thin & Crispy White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies have the perfect balance of sweet, tart, and CRUNCH!
Thin and Crispy Sugar Cookies
Thin and Crispy Sugar Cookies are a Tate's style crunchy cookie that are deliciously easy (it's a no-chill no-roll drop cookie dough.)
What do you suggest for high altitude adjustments?
A few suggestions: Decrease baking soda by about 1/4 teaspoon. Maybe increase your oven temp a bit and shorten the baking time a bit as well. Do a test cookie to see how you need to fine tune this.
Hi 🙂 This recipe looks amazing. I just wanted to ask, how long will baked cookies stay crispy? I want to bake them some days ahead of my husband birthday party 🥳
What went wrong? These cookies were chewy and crunchy – they stick to your teeth like candy! Also, they seemed very greasy. I followed the recipe exactly.
Sometimes measuring can be off, even when we follow recipes exactly. It sounds like you needed a bit more flour in your dough.
Oh, my, only two Tate’s chocolate cookies left in the cookie jar. Perfect that I found your recipe just now.I am almost ready to put Hess in the oven. please, please….try to formulate their coconut cookies too.I know that yours will be perfect! All your recipes that I have tried are great!
I will! I want to recreate every flavor, and then some 🙂
Cookies were just like tates. Used gluten free flour.
Thanks for this Joe, it’s quite a feat to make a thin and crispy gluten free cookie!
14 mins was way too long for my oven, more like 8-10 like a typical cookie. My first batch came out almost burnt. And these are greasy in the end, not quite as described. Still delicious though, especially once we adjusted the cooking time way down.
For sure, ovens do vary quite a bit, which is why I always say don’t rely on any recipe for the exact cooking time, yours is likely to vary.
Well – this is the one I’ve been looking for! Thin, crispy, and addictive! I don’t think this can be topped!😊
I’ve been looking and looking, and I think I found it!! One question: I plan to make them again, adding toasted chopped walnuts. Any advice?
I think that would be fabulous! You should have no problem adding in the chopped walnuts, you could try lowering the chocolate chips to 1 cup, and adding about 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts.
While they do taste delicious they do spread out waaay too much! I was looking for a thinner cookie recipe but this was not what I was hoping for.
It sounds like you may have under measured your flour, SF. These cookies depend on very precise measuring of all ingredients.
So I had similar issues to other people, but I have notorious heat and humidity issues in my kitchen. It’s a conventional oven, I know my measurements were correct, but something is still a bit askew. If you can help me I would greatly appreciate it because the taste is top tier. They are getting too flat, too dark and a bit chewy. Mind you my kitchen was probably 80 plus degrees. The butter seems to run or separate a little too quickly because of the heat so I did try less time, slightly colder oven and a smaller cookie ball. That definitely helped but it doesn’t fix the chew on it. They do have the crisp, but the chewy is making me think something else could be off too. Any advice here? I’m also in the mountains if that helps.