Chocolate Chip Cookies without Brown Sugar

Chocolate chip cookies without brown sugar are thick, chewy, and crisp at the edges, made with only granulated sugar and standard pantry staples.

Honestly, I was skeptical of making chocolate chip cookies without brown sugar. When I set out to adapt my bakery-style chocolate chip cookie recipe using only granulated sugar, I fully expected to miss the brown sugar. I didn’t.

These are the cookies I reach for when I am out of brown sugar and unwilling to wait, and they hold up beautifully on their own terms. Need more classic cookies without brown sugar? Check out these funfetti cookies or thumbprint cookies.

Ingredients & Substitutions

• All-Purpose Flour: Flour provides structure through gluten formation and starch gelatinization. Weighing the flour using a kitchen scale is the only way to guarantee consistent results.
• Baking Powder and Baking Soda: These two leaveners work together to balance spread and tenderness. Baking powder gives a sustained lift for thicker cookies, while baking soda promotes browning and spread, which is especially important when you are working with only white sugar.
• Kosher Salt
• Butter: Butter provides richness, tenderness, and the fat structure that controls spread. “Slightly softened” means still cool and a bit resistant to the touch, not room temperature soft. That firmness lets you cream the butter and sugar properly without losing structure, just like with these apple pie cookies.
• Granulated Sugar: White sugar drives the crisp edges here because it lacks the moisture and acidity of brown sugar. It also aerates the butter during creaming.
• Egg: Use a true large egg; a smaller egg will give a drier, crumblier result.
• Vanilla Extract: Vanilla deepens the overall flavor and keeps the cookies from tasting one-note sweet, which is especially important without the molasses notes of brown sugar. Use pure vanilla for the cleanest flavor.
• Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips: Semi-sweet chips bring balanced sweetness and bitterness that works with the higher sugar content of this dough. A full 12 ounces gives you plenty of chocolate in every bite, and the chip clusters also interrupt the spread, which helps the cookies stay thick. If you love a loaded, fruit-forward cookie, my cherry chocolate chip cookies show another way to use semi-sweet chips to great effect.

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

Variations on This Chocolate Chip Cookies without Brown Sugar

• Skip the chill for thinner cookies. Baking the dough straight from the bowl without chilling will give you a flatter, crispier cookie with more spread, still good, but a noticeably different texture than the thick, chewy result the full chill produces.
• Dark chocolate chips. Swap the semi-sweet chips for dark chocolate chips to deepen the bitterness and balance the higher sweetness of an all-white-sugar dough. The contrast is especially clean here without brown sugar’s molasses rounding out the flavor.
• Add-ins. Fold in up to ½ cup of chopped toasted walnuts or pecans with the chocolate chips like I do in these orange pecan chocolate chip cookies or throw in the kitchen sink like these caramel chocolate chip cookies. The nuts add texture and a slight bitterness that works well against the sweeter base.

Professional Tips

• Use slightly softened butter, not melted or warm. Butter that is too soft or beginning to melt will not cream properly, and the dough will spread flat in the oven, undoing everything the chilling step is meant to prevent.
• Do not overmix once the flour goes in. Adding the flour gradually helps it incorporate in batches and will take less time then adding the flour all at once, this is especially important when making thick chocolate chip cookies.
• Chill the dough fully before portioning. One hour in the refrigerator gives the fat time to firm back up and the flour time to fully hydrate. Cookies baked from warm dough spread too fast and lose the height that defines this recipe.
• Bake at 325°F convection or 350°F conventional. Higher temperatures cause the edges to set and brown too fast before the centers have time to develop. The lower temperature is what keeps these cookies thick and gives you that crunchy edge and chewy center combination.

How to Make Chocolate Chip Cookies without Brown Sugar

This comes together quickly, so have your ingredients measured and ready before you start.

Step 1: Whisk the dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt until evenly combined. Set the bowl aside. (photo 1)

Step 2: Cream the butter and sugar. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and granulated sugar together on medium speed until the mixture looks pale, fluffy, and noticeably increased in volume. This is not a quick 30-second mix, so give it the time it needs. (photos 2 & 3)

Step 3: Add the egg and vanilla. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat on medium-high speed until the mixture looks smooth and fully emulsified. (photos 4 & 5)

If it looks slightly curdled or broken, your egg was probably cold, which is completely fine. Just move on to the next step.

Step 4: Add the flour mixture and fold in the chocolate chips. Reduce the mixer to low and add the flour mixture in 3 to 4 gradual additions, mixing until just combined after each. Add the chocolate chips and stir until distributed. Stop the moment the flour disappears; the dough will be thick and scoopable. (photos 6, 7, & 8)

Step 5: Portion the dough. Scoop the dough into large balls, approximately the size of half a lemon or 85 grams each, and place them on a parchment-lined baking sheet. (photo 9).

For the thickest cookies, refrigerate the portioned dough for at least 1 hour or overnight before baking. You can bake them immediately, but the chill time makes a real difference in height and texture.

Step 6: Preheat the oven and arrange the cookies. When you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325°F convection or 350°F conventional. Place the chilled dough balls 2 inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet. (photo 10)

Step 7: Bake. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes. The edges will be set and lightly browned, and the centers will look matte with small cracks forming across the surface and just the faintest hint of golden color. That matte, cracked center is exactly what you are looking for, so pull them at that point. I baked the last round in 19 minutes, which landed right in the sweet spot. (photo 11)

Step 8: Cool on the pan, then transfer. Let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before moving them. They will continue to set as they cool, and that rest time is what gives you that crunchy edge with a chewy center. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe FAQs

Before You Go

These white sugar chocolate chip cookies have a crackled top, chewy center, and crisp edges that make them hard to stop at one. If you want to keep baking, browse all my Cookie Recipes or explore the full Dessert Recipes archive for what to make next.