Chocolate Chip Cut-Out Cookie Recipe for Cookie Decorating

Why You’ll Love These Chocolate Chip Cut-Out Cookies

• Designed specifically for cookie decorating
• Holds its shape for detailed cookie cutters
• Sweet, buttery flavor with melty mini chocolate chips
• Pairs perfectly with royal icing
  

These are the best chocolate chip cookies for cut-out shapes—ideal for holiday cookies, cookie gift sets, or just a fun baking day with kids.

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Chocolate Chip Cut-Out Cookie Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 cup (two sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup packed brown sugar (Either light or dark is fine to use.)
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

Step 1

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Step 2

In a mixer, cream together butter and the two sugars. Mix until fluffy and well incorporated.

Step 3

Add eggs, salt, vanilla extract, and baking powder and beat until well mixed.

Step 4

Add flour a cupful at a time, to the butter/sugar/egg mixture. After everything is well mixed, the dough should be non-greasy to the touch. If the dough is still sticky, add an extra 1/4 cup of flour.

Step 5

With a hand spatula, fold in the mini chocolate chips and mix until just combined.

Step 6

Roll to 1/4 inch thickness between two sheets of parchment or wax paper. (I love my Joseph Joseph rolling pin because the guides take the guess work out of wondering if your cookies are the correct thickness and evenly rolled out.) After rolling, chill the dough for at least 30 minutes.

Step 7

Once the dough is well chilled and hard to the touch, cut out shapes and place them on a parchment paper-lined, light-colored baking sheet. Chill the cutout shapes again before baking.

Step 8

Bake at 375 degrees for 7-9 minutes. Remove from the oven before the first indication of the edges turning brown. Leave the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes.

Step 9

Remove cookies from the baking sheet with a spatula and place on a cooling rack to cool before decorating.

A few things to note.

Because this recipe has chocolate chips, I recommend a sturdy cookie cutter to cut through those tough chunks. For this batch, I also carved out custom cookie shapes with a parrying knife but I found it to be quite difficult. If you are thinking about using custom cookie shapes that involve cutting them out by hand I would not recommend this type of dough.

This chocolate chip cut-out cookie recipe has very minimal spread after baking. However, because of the chocolate chips, the edges are still a little rough compared to my go-to sugar cookie recipe.

That being said, I think the rough edges and the dark chip speckles would add a nice background element to decorated cookies. I could see this dough being a great complement to themes like dinosaurs or safari sets, just to name a few.

Now that you know how the best chocolate chip cookie recipe, it's time to find the perfect shape for your next batch of cookies! At Semi Sweet Designs, we have a wide selection of cookie cutter shapes for every season and holiday.