Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

These chocolate cookies get the double treatment with unsweetened cocoa powder built into the dough and semi-sweet chips folded through. The cookies look almost black coming out of the oven and stay soft and chewy without spreading thin and flat.

The unexpected ingredient is buttermilk. Most chocolate chip cookies skip the dairy entirely, but here it adds tang that balances the sweetness and reacts with the baking soda for extra lift. The result is a softer, cake-like crumb that holds up against the dense chocolate flavor.

Kitchen Tips

• Pull the cookies from the oven when the centers still look soft and almost wet. They finish setting on the hot pan, and full-set centers in the oven equal dry, crumbly cookies.
• Drop by teaspoonfuls, not tablespoons. The cookies bake up small and quick at this size, which keeps the centers soft instead of overbaked.
• Sift the cocoa with the flour if it’s lumpy. Cocoa clumps don’t dissolve fully in a wet-method cookie and you get pockets of bitter dry cocoa in the finished bite.
• These don’t spread much. Don’t expect a flat, chewy thin cookie. They stay mounded and soft.

Variations

• Swap semi-sweet chips for white chocolate or dark chocolate chunks for contrast.
• Add a half teaspoon of espresso powder to the dry ingredients to deepen the chocolate flavor.
• Roll the formed dough balls in flaky salt or coarse sugar before baking for a sweet-salty finish.