You’ve seen the photo. It’s that puddle of golden-brown dough, rippled with dark chocolate, topped with a dusting of flaky salt that looks almost too intentional. If you’ve spent any time on the food side of the internet in the last few years, you’ve encountered the BA Best Chocolate Chip Cookies. Developed by Chris Morocco at Bon Appétit, this recipe didn’t just go viral; it became a benchmark. It changed how home bakers think about butter.
Most recipes start with "cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy." Not this one.
The BA Best Chocolate Chip Cookies rely on the transformative, nutty, almost funky power of browned butter. It’s a technique that separates the casual bakers from the people who are willing to stand over a saucepan for eight minutes watching milk solids turn into toasted gold. Honestly, it’s a bit of a commitment. But once you smell that hazelnut aroma wafting off the stove, you realize why people obsessed over this specific formula during the peak of the "Best Ever" recipe wars.
The Science of the Brown Butter Bit
What makes the BA Best Chocolate Chip Cookies different? It’s the moisture—or rather, the lack of it. When you brown butter, you’re simmering off the water content. Most American butter is about 16-18% water. By cooking that out, you're intensifying the fat and the toasted proteins.
This creates a cookie that is chewier, denser, and far more complex than your standard Toll House variety. Morocco’s recipe calls for two sticks of butter, but only one gets browned. The other stays cold and firm. Why? Because if you use 100% hot browned butter, your dough becomes an oily mess that spreads into a pancake. By whisking the hot butter into the sugars and then adding the cold butter, you create an emulsion. It’s a bit finicky. You have to whisk it until it’s smooth and glossy, almost like a caramel sauce.
If you don't whisk it enough, the fat will separate. You'll end up with greasy edges. Nobody wants a greasy cookie. You want that "shatter-crisp" rim and a center that feels almost like fudge.
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Why Hand-Chopped Chocolate Is Non-Negotiable
Stop buying chips. Seriously.
The BA Best Chocolate Chip Cookies require a bar of high-quality dark chocolate, roughly 70% cacao. Brands like Guittard or Valrhona are the gold standard here. When you chop a bar with a serrated knife, you get "chocolate dust." Those tiny slivers melt into the dough, turning the entire cookie a light shade of cocoa, while the bigger chunks create those iconic pools of melted ganache.
Chocolate chips are engineered to hold their shape. They have stabilizers. They're fine for a school bake sale, but they don't give you the "rippled" look that makes these cookies Google-famous. You need the irregularity. Each bite should be different—some with a huge hunk of bitter chocolate, some with just the salty, buttery crumb.
The Sugar Ratio and the "Whisking" Phase
There’s a massive amount of brown sugar in this recipe compared to white sugar. That’s where the chew comes from. Brown sugar is hygroscopic, meaning it grabs onto moisture and keeps the cookie soft.
The technique here is more like making a meringue than a traditional cookie. You whisk the sugars and the butter intensely. You’re looking for a color change. It should go from dark brown to a pale, sandy tan. This process dissolves the sugar crystals. If you skip this or get lazy after 30 seconds, your cookies will have a grainy texture. You’re looking for a smooth, homogenous base before you even think about touching the flour.
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Common Failures: Why Yours Didn't Look Like the Photo
Even with the BA Best Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe in hand, people mess it up. I’ve done it.
The biggest culprit? The temperature of the butter-sugar mixture when the eggs go in. If it’s too hot, you scramble the eggs. If it’s too cold, the emulsion breaks. It needs to be warm but not scorching.
- The Flour Trap: People pack their measuring cups. If you use too much flour, the cookies won't spread. They’ll stay as little mounds. Use a scale. 185 grams. Not a gram more.
- The Chill Factor: The original recipe says you can bake them right away. Honestly? Don't. Let that dough sit in the fridge for at least two hours, or even 24. It allows the flour to fully hydrate and the flavors to marinate. It makes a world of difference in the depth of the "toffee" notes.
- The Ovens Lie: Most home ovens are off by 10 to 25 degrees. If your cookies are taking 15 minutes to brown, your oven is too cold. These need a hot 375°F (190°C) environment to get those crispy, caramelized edges before the center overcooks.
Is It Actually the "Best"?
Flavor is subjective, obviously. Some people find the BA Best Chocolate Chip Cookies too rich. It’s a "grown-up" cookie. It’s salty. It’s very dark. It isn't the sweet, puffy, cake-like cookie you find at a grocery store bakery.
Sarah Jampel, formerly of Bon Appétit and now a major voice in the baking world, has often discussed the evolution of this recipe. It was built to be the "maximalist" cookie. It hits every single sensory note: salt, fat, bitter, sweet, crunch, and chew. Compared to the famous New York Times recipe (which requires a 36-hour chill) or the Sarah Kieffer pan-banging method, the BA version is actually somewhat faster to execute while delivering a similar level of "gourmet" quality.
But let's be real. It's a lot of dishes. You've got a saucepan for the butter, a bowl for the dry ingredients, and a big bowl for the whisking. It's a mess. If you're looking for a one-bowl, five-minute fix, this isn't it. This is a project.
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The Salt Factor
Don't use table salt for the topping. Please.
Maldon Sea Salt is the specific recommendation for a reason. The pyramid-shaped flakes provide a crunch without being "salty" in a chemical way. It balances the high fat content of the browned butter. If you use fine salt, it’ll just dissolve into the grease and make the whole thing taste like a salt lick.
How to Master the BA Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
If you're going to tackle this, go all in. Don't sub the dark chocolate for milk chocolate—it'll be cloyingly sweet. Don't swap the butter for margarine. The chemistry depends on the milk solids in real butter.
- Brown the butter slowly. If you see black specks, you've burnt it. Start over. You want amber specks.
- Whisk until your arm hurts. Then whisk for another minute. The "gloss" is the indicator that your emulsion is stable.
- Scoop them big. These aren't meant to be bite-sized. Use a 3-tablespoon scoop. The larger size allows for the gradient of textures from the edge to the center.
- Watch the edges. Pull them out when the rims are dark golden brown, even if the centers look slightly raw. They carry overcook on the hot pan.
The BA Best Chocolate Chip Cookies represent a specific era of food media—the pursuit of the definitive version of a classic. Whether it's truly the "best" is up to your palate, but in terms of technical structure and flavor profile, it’s hard to find a recipe that works harder to earn that title.
Actionable Next Steps
To ensure your next batch hits the mark, start by calibrating your equipment. Grab a cheap oven thermometer to verify your baking temperature, as the high-heat caramelization is key to this recipe's success. Next, source a bar of 70% dark chocolate rather than chips; the difference in melt and "mouthfeel" is the primary reason the professional version looks better than the home-baked one. Finally, weigh your flour in grams. Volume measurements are the leading cause of "cakey" cookies that fail to spread properly.