These inside out chocolate chip cookies combine a rich and fudgy chocolate cookie base, the same we use for double chocolate chip cookies. Enjoy super soft and brownie-like centers, chewy edges, and sweet white chocolate chips in each bite. They’re as loved as my chewy chocolate chip cookies and as undeniably rich as my homemade brownies.
Hello and welcome back to 2013 when I initially published this recipe. Now with updated pictures, clearer instructions, and helpful success tips, there’s no excuse not to try the ONLY CHOCOLATE COOKIE RECIPE YOU NEED. Wow, that’s quite the statement.
In the past several years, these inside out chocolate chip cookies have climbed to the top of my most-loved cookie recipe list. Along with chewy chocolate chip cookies, drop sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, and oatmeal raisin cookies, this is the gold standard of cookie dough recipes to try.
What Are Inside Out Chocolate Chip Cookies?
I know you’re looking at me cross-eyed wondering what, why, and how these are inside out cookies. Think of a regular chocolate chip cookie—buttery brown sugar base with chocolate chips, right? Well, the term “inside out” means that the cookie base is now chocolate and the add-in is white chocolate. Obviously white chocolate chips don’t taste like the buttery brown sugar base of a regular cookie, but I don’t think anyone’s complaining here.
Simply put, these are Chocolate White Chocolate Chip Cookies. (Think of them like the cookie version of chocolate white chocolate cupcakes!)
Video Tutorial
These Chocolate Cookies Are:
- Easy to make with a basic recipe
- A personal and reader favorite
- Soft-baked with brownie-like centers
- Chewy on the edges
- Massively chocolatey
The recipe is also easy to double in 1 mixing bowl without overwhelming/overcrowding your mixer and the baked cookies freeze wonderfully.
How to Make Inside Out Chocolate Chip Cookies
Even though it’s one of my favorite base cookie recipes, I’ve never walked you through the recipe process. We’ll do that real quick:
- Mix dry ingredients together. You need all-purpose flour, natural unsweetened cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Do you remember the difference between dutch-process vs. natural cocoa powder? Use natural here.
- Beat wet ingredients together. You need butter, white sugar, brown sugar, egg, and vanilla extract. Room temperature butter and egg will mix more evenly into each other, creating a uniform texture among all the cookies. Additionally, both whip into a greater volume when at room temperature, producing a softer-crumbed cookie.
- Combine all ingredients, then add milk. 1 Tablespoon of milk smooths out the dough. And don’t forget to add the white chocolate chips.
- Chill the cookie dough in the refrigerator. The cookie dough is sticky and unmanageable, so chilling is necessary. I usually chill it overnight, but 3 hours is just enough. Chilled cookie dough is not only easier to handle and roll into balls, it also guarantees thicker cookies. See my tips on How to Prevent Cookies from Spreading.
- Roll cookie dough into balls. After chilling, scoop and roll the cookie dough into tall balls—a heaping 1.5 Tablespoons of dough per cookie.
- Bake. Bake the cookies for 11-12 minutes. If the cookies aren’t really spreading by minute 9, remove them from the oven and lightly bang the baking sheet on the counter 2-3x. This helps initiate that spread. Return to the oven for a couple more minutes.
Let them cool for a few minutes and experience a fudgy brownie in cookie form. I usually don’t like milk with cookies, but this recipe basically demands it.
Sticky Dough
This cookie dough is sticky, even if you’ve chilled it, so a cookie scoop is helpful. The medium size is perfect because each dough ball should be around 1.5 Tablespoons of dough. If you use your hands, expect to make a little mess as you shape the cookie dough balls. Have a kitchen towel or paper towel nearby. I usually wipe my hands clean after every few cookie dough balls. Clean hands make rolling easier.
Same Dough, Different Cookie
Though ultra soft-baked with chewy edges and fudge-like centers, these chocolate cookies aren’t anything new or groundbreaking. In fact, you might actually recognize the base dough because it’s been my go-to chocolate cookie for years. This is the same exact cookie dough as:
- Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Salted Caramel Dark Chocolate Cookies
- Peppermint Mocha Cookies
- Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
- Double Chocolate Chip Swirl Cookies
- Andes Mint Chocolate Cookies
Note: The chocolate crinkle cookies and peppermint mocha cookies can over-spread as a result of the sugar coating and peppermint extract (respectively), so I leave out the milk in those versions.
Need cookies right NOW? If you don’t have time to chill the dough, try giant chocolate chip cookies, Nutella chocolate chip cookies, or even one giant chocolate cookie.
And if you’re looking for cookie cutter chocolate cookies, here are my chocolate sugar cookies.
Interested in freezing the baked cookies or cookie dough?
- Here’s How to Freeze Cookie Dough
More of My Classic Cookie Recipes
- Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies & Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
- Peanut Butter Cookies
- Sugar Cookies
- Chocolate Chip Cookies (extra chewy!)
- Snickerdoodles
- Shortbread Cookies
Inside Out Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Prep Time: 3 hours, 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 12 minutes
- Total Time: 3 hours, 30 minutes
- Yield: 20-22 cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These inside out chocolate chip cookies combine a rich and fudgy chocolate cookie base, super soft and brownie-like centers, chewy edges, and sweet white chocolate chips. Easy to throw together, this is my base chocolate cookie recipe. This cookie dough requires at least 3 hours of refrigeration.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup (8 Tbsp; 113g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup (100g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 1 large egg, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup (125g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 2/3 cup (55g) natural unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1 Tablespoon (15ml) milk (any kind, dairy or non)
- 1 and 1/4 cups (225g) white chocolate chips, plus a few more for optional topping*
Instructions
- Preliminary note: This cookie dough requires at least 3 hours of chilling, but I prefer to chill the dough overnight. The colder the dough, the thicker the cookies.
- In a large bowl using a hand-held or stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar together on medium high speed until fluffy and light in color, about 2-3 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla extract, and then beat on high speed until combined. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed.
- In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt together until combined. With the mixer running on low speed, slowly pour into the wet ingredients. Beat on low until combined. The cookie dough will be quite thick. Switch to high speed and beat in the milk, then the white chocolate chips. The cookie dough will be sticky and tacky. Cover dough tightly and chill in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours and up to 3 days. Chilling is mandatory for this sticky cookie dough.
- Remove cookie dough from the refrigerator and allow to sit at room temperature for 10 minutes. If the cookie dough chilled longer than 3 hours, let it sit at room temperature for about 20 minutes. This makes the chilled cookie dough easier to scoop and roll.
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.
- Scoop and roll dough, a heaping 1.5 Tablespoons of dough each, into balls. (I like using this medium cookie scoop.) To ensure a thicker cookie, make the balls taller than they are wide (almost like a cylinder or column). Arrange 2-3 inches apart on the baking sheets. The cookie dough is certainly sticky, so wipe your hands clean after every few balls of dough you shape.
- Bake the cookies for 11-12 minutes or until the edges appear set and the centers still look soft. Tip: If they aren’t really spreading by minute 9, remove them from the oven and lightly bang the baking sheet on the counter 2-3x. This helps initiate that spread. Return to the oven to continue baking.
- Cool cookies for 5 minutes on the baking sheet. During this time, I like to press a few more white chocolate chips into the tops of the warm cookies. (This is optional and only for looks.) Transfer to cooling rack to cool completely. The cookies will slightly deflate as they cool.Â
- Cover leftover cookies tightly and store at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Notes
- Make Ahead & Freezing Instructions: You can make the cookie dough and chill it in the refrigerator for up to 3 days (step 3). Baked cookies freeze well for up to 3 months. Unbaked cookie dough balls freeze well for up to 3 months. Bake frozen cookie dough balls for an extra minute, no need to thaw. Read my tips and tricks on how to freeze cookie dough.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | Baking Sheets | Silicone Baking Mat or Parchment Paper | Medium Cookie Scoop | Cooling Rack
- Larger Batch: The recipe is easy to double in 1 mixing bowl without overwhelming your mixer. Simply double all of the cookie dough ingredients. Dough chill time remains the same.
- Other Add-Ins: Instead of white chocolate chips in the dough, you can use the same amount of peanut butter chips, regular chocolate chips, M&Ms, chopped nuts, or butterscotch chips.
- Be sure to check out my top 5 cookie baking tips AND these are my 10 must-have cookie baking tools.
how many servings?
Hi Madison, this recipe yields 20-22 cookies.
hi, i made these yesterday and they are bitter. I can taste the baking soda bitterness. Any tips. I made most of your cookies successfully dont know what i did wrong this time. I used butterscotch chips which help the bitterness but only when bitten together with the cookie. It isnt from the cocoa cause u get that stainy taste on ur tongue that you get from too much soda. Thanks
Hi Nicola! We would try again with fresh baking soda, it can leave a bitter after taste when losing its freshness. Also make sure you’re using natural cocoa powder.
Fantastic recipe. Followed exactly except for one small change. We always increase the chip to cookie dough ratio and did that again here.
my favorite cookie recipe! reminds me of a brownie in cookie form. I make them at least once a month 🙂
Sally, thanks as always for such great recipes. Question for you: is there a brand of cocoa powder you recommend? The one I used I felt wasn’t very rich, so was curious if you had a go-to.
These turned out perfect and they were all gone within a few hours at my house! I followed the recipe exactly and only needed to chill the dough for a couple hours, then I rolled them into taller cylinder shapes and baked for 9-10 minutes at 350. They were so good! Will definitely be making these frequently!
Hi Sally and Team!! We looove these cookies so much that we’ve made them for several Christmas’s in a row. I’m a pretty experienced baker myself so it vexes me that these delicious cookies never turn out very pretty for me. I use a quality American brand of butter, (so, not a higher-fat European type) measure by weight, and follow all instructions regarding shaping, chilling, and baking. We have made hundreds of these cookies (only mixing one batch at a time) and they just always come out wonky shaped instead of nice and round like the pictures here. That’s not really a problem for the ones we make for ourselves but we also like to share this deliciousness in our annual cookie boxes… and there’s the rub. We’ve come to a point where we really WANT these but are also aggravated at them because they just aren’t so pretty. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what can be wrong. Also, I keep two extra thermometers in my oven, so the baking temp is precise as well. Hope you guys are enjoying some well-deserved rest and relaxation with loved ones this season. When you’re back, please help me troubleshoot the issues we’ve experienced. Thanks!
Hi Sally, Question I like to freeze my cookie dough balls overnight then bake next day. Can I do that with this recipe?
You bet! See recipe notes for details.
I made these today with mint m&m’s for a bit of a Christmas twist – they are delicious! Soft & fudgy middle with a crisp & minty bite from the m&m’s. A 30 minute chill time in the fridge was perfect. Thank you for sharing such wonderful recipes!
This recipe is delicious and I used the cream chese chips.
this is my favorite recipe i make multiple times a year but i recently developed a gluten allergy does anyone have advice to making this gluten free and taste similarly
Hi Moppy, We haven’t tested this recipe with gluten free flours, but some readers have reported success using 1:1 flour substitutes (like Cup4Cup). If you try it, let us know how it goes!
OMG!! These Inside Out Chocolate Chip Cookies are amazingly good. I followed the recipe to the letter and they turned out perfect. My boyfriend now has a new favorite cookie.
Thanks for sharing this recipe.
Best freaking cookies I’ve ever made!! They came out perfectly…super thick, chewy, chocolatey, with the creaminess from the white chocolate chips. I only refrigerated the dough for maybe 30-45 minutes. These were pretty quick and easy to make. Definitely printing and keeping this recipe!
Literally the best recipe I’ve ever had, my brothers ask for this non stop, they genuinely tell me they would just be happy if they got a box of these for. Christmas and nothing else! I usually dip them in peppermint white chocolate and it’s amazing!
Yum! So glad they’re a hit, Mackenzie 🙂
I love this recipe! I made it once, took them to work and they were a hit. I made them a second time, but all I had was dark chocolate, so I made them. They were a VERY, VERY FLAT PIECE of paper with white bumps. Would the chocolate make that much difference? I always weigh my ingredients. Please help!
Hi Lexie, I don’t think the chocolate would make that much of a difference… my best guess is that the dough was too warm. Did you chill it for at least 3 hours? If the dough sat out for a while when you were rolling the cookies and got a little too room-temp, that could be the issue too. Next time, I’d recommend chilling the cookie dough balls for 20 minutes before baking, just for extra insurance!
Thank you so much for responding so quickly. I really do appreciate it. I did refrigerate it over night, so I thought maybe it was the chocolate. So this time I will roll out one cookie sheet at a time and put the dough back in the fridge. I do have very large cookie sheets.
Query – do you mean you made them with (melted?) dark chocolate instead of cocoa powder? Or with alkalized cocoa powder instead of natural? I’m curious, because I know the PH balance can get thrown if the more acidic cocoa powder gets replaced with the less acidic, and then the rise could get thrown off.
I never knew this until I read Sally’s writing on it here!
https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/baking-basics-dutch-process-natural-cocoa-powder/
I don’t know if you will get this reply, but last time I made these I realized I was almost out of natural cocoa! So I used mostly Dutch process and crossed my fingers. It didn’t seem to make any difference at all! I guess this just isn’t that finicky of a recipe. 🙂
I followed the instructions exactly and the result was perfect.
This recipe looks AMAZING and everything I’ve made of yours tastes fantastic. However, I made this recipe last week and must’ve done something wrong! My cookies came out completely flat and spread so thin they all tan together on the pan. I did everything as stated in the recipe, chilled the dough overnight, made sure I used the right kind of coco powder, my eggs and butter were room temperature and I weighed all of the dry ingredients. Do you have any idea what might’ve gone wrong??
Hi Morgann! There’s a number of factors that could cause cookies to spread too much – here’s our post with our best tips to prevent cookies from spreading!
i reckon using caramilk choc chips would make it cooler. cause golden chocolate truly is like the golden buttery sugary base of a non-inside out choc chip cookie. and then u wouldn’t need the disclaimer u put about white chocolate not really being like the base of a choc chip cookie. what’re ur thoughts? but i can’t wait to try this recipe regardless of the chip colour 🙂
Hi Alexandria, you can use any type of baking chip add-in you prefer. Hope you enjoy the cookies!
I used peanut butter chocolate chips and oh my goodness! These are by far the best cookies I’ve ever eaten!
I added a little coffee extract to them and cut a minute or two off of the cook time. They were wonderful!
These cookies came out perfect just the way the recipe says. Incredibly easy.
These cookies were delicious! I added whole almonds. The dough was not sticky at all, and I did not need to chill the dough at all. They were still thick and perfect..
These cookies are soooo good!! I didn’t read any of the instructions, just ingredients so didn’t see to chill for 3 hours. For me, it wasn’t needed. They are perfect. I even flattened them a bit before baking to pile on more chips. I used a mixture of white chocolate chips, milk chocolate, semi-sweet and mini semi-sweet chocolate chips. Can you have too many chocolate chips? Lol. These are amazing!!
Is it possible to do this successfully without a mixer?
Hi Laura, for a recipe that requires creaming softened butter, it’s best to have an electric mixer, either a hand or stand mixer. Some of our cookie recipes, like this popular chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe, use melted butter, so you can mix those by hand.
Amazing cookies!! No adjustments to the recipe needed.
After 12 minutes my cookies looked cracked and done on the outside but inside still looked wet. Is that normal?
Hi Danie, yes, the cookies will continue to set/bake as they cool on the baking sheet. Enjoy!
They are awesome
I love these cookies. I was hoping to make them into a cookie pizza. How many batches do you think that I would need to make?
Hi Marie, one batch should be fine for a cookie pizza, but feel free to 1.5x or 2x it if you wish and save the extra cookie dough for regular cookies!
Delicious and easy!! Cookies were amazing, exactly what I’ve been craving and so happy to come across the perfect recipe!
Such a delicious chocolatey cookie!
Delicious and easy!! Cookies were amazing, exactly what I’ve been craving and so happy to come across the perfect recipe!