Chocolate Chip Cookies without Brown Sugar

These chocolate chip cookies without brown sugar bake up with soft centers, crisp, buttery edges, and gooey, melty chocolate in each bite! Whenever you're out of brown sugar, but craving a freshly baked cookie RIGHT NOW, this recipe is just what you need! Without the brown sugar, these cookies lack that classic chewy texture, but still have every other quality of a perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. And sometimes the craving outweighs the desire for that chewy texture! If you do have brown sugar on hand and want a cookie recipe that truly checks all of the boxes, I highly recommend these small batch chocolate chip cookies!

For more cookie recipes, try 4th of July Cookies, Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies, Spiced Apple Pie Cookies, and Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies.

Ingredient Notes

• All-Purpose Flour: You'll need about 1 ½ cups of high-quality unbleached flour. 
• Leavener: Most cookies use baking soda (and sometimes cornstarch as well) for the leavener, but after lots of research and testing, it turns out baking powder creates cookies with soft & thick centers and crisp edges!
• Butter: You'll need about 1 ½ sticks of room temperature butter. 
• Sugar: Though most cookie recipes call for both granulated and brown sugar, this recipe calls for just granulated sugar. So if you're out of brown sugar, you can still get your cookie fix!
• Vanilla: You can't make a good chocolate chip cookie recipe without vanilla!
• Egg: You'll need just one egg for this recipe. 
• Chocolate: Use your favorite semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate!

See recipe card for full information on ingredients and individual quantities.

Step by Step Instructions

This is a simple cookie recipe of creaming together the butter & sugar, mixing in the egg & vanilla, adding the dry ingredients, and lastly folding in the chocolate. Chill them for just 30 minutes, and bake! You'll have warm, gooey chocolate chip cookies on your kitchen counter in no time. For the full ingredient list and method, see the recipe card at the end of this post.

STEP 1: Cream. Cream together the butter and sugar.

STEP 2: Add wet ingredients. Mix in the egg and vanilla until combined.

STEP 3: Mix. Add in the dry ingredients and mix.

STEP 4: Fold. Fold the chocolate into the dough gently until combined.

STEP 5: Scoop. Portion the dough with a cookie scoop onto a prepared baking tray.

STEP 6: Freeze and bake. Freeze the portioned cookie dough for 30 minutes and then bake.

Expert Baking Tips

• Do not skip the freeze time! It is essential to achieve a thicker cookie with crisp, golden edges and soft centers.
• Store these cookies in an air-tight container for up to 3 days. Alternatively, you can freeze the portioned cookie dough or the baked cookies for up to three months.

All of the recipes on this blog are carefully developed with gram measurements so you can easily recreate them in your own kitchen with success. Volume measurements are extremely inaccurate and leave room for significant errors. Not all measuring cups are made equally, so your one cup of flour will be different from my one cup of flour. By providing precise measurements in grams (aside from minor ingredients, which are given in tsp/tbsp), you can make these recipes accurately and with less cleanup! All you need is this kitchen scale. 

If this still isn't enough to convince you, I have provided volume measurements in the recipe card. If you are interested in understanding the conversions, this is the best conversion chart.

But trust me, once you try baking in grams you'll never turn back!

Happy baking! x