Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies

This easy recipe helps you to create delicious chocolate chip walnut cookies. These cookies are a family favorite because they are sweet with a nutty crunch! They are very simple to make and are great snacks or desserts for cookie-loving children… and cookie-loving adults – like me!!

Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies

Recipe Sections

• Ingredients
• Instructions
• Helpful Tips

Since these cookies are made with chopped nuts, please do not serve them to anyone with a nut allergy. Always check your family and guests for potential food allergies before serving food with nuts.

Key Ingredients – Chocolate Chips & Chopped Walnuts

Ingredients

• 16 Tablespoons – Unsalted Butter (softened) – 230 grams
• 2 – Large Eggs
• 1 Cup – Granulated White Sugar – 200 grams
• 1/2 Cup – Light Brown Sugar (packed) – 107 grams
• 1 Teaspoon – Vanilla Extract – 5 milliliters
• 2 1/4 Cups – All Purpose Flour – 270 grams
• 1 Teaspoon – Baking Soda – 5 grams
• 1/2 Teaspoon – Salt – 3 grams
• 1 Cup – Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips – 170 grams
• 1 Cup – Chopped Walnuts – 115 grams – You can also use chopped pecans

Servings – Roughly 24-30 cookies (amount depends on the size of the cookie that you create)

Equipment Needed – Measuring cup & spoons, mixing bowl, electric mixer, tablespoon or cookie dough scoop, oven mitts, silicon spatula, baking sheets, cooling rack and an oven.

Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookie Dough Being Mixed

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
• Lightly beat the eggs.
• Mix butter, eggs, granulated white sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in a large bowl. Use an electric mixer to mix these ingredients together. Mix until creamy.
• Then stir in the flour, baking soda and salt. Use an electric mixer to mix all of the ingredients together. Mix until the ingredients are completely blended and the cookie dough looks creamy. FYI – Read the tips section below to find out why using an electric mixer results in a much better cookie than mixing by hand. However, don’t overmix. Only mix for 1-2 minutes with an electric mixer.
• Add the chocolate chips & chopped walnuts to the cookie dough. Use a large spoon (not an electric mixer) to stir in chocolate chips & nuts. Stir until chips & nuts are mixed evenly throughout the dough.
• Optional (but recommended) – Chill the dough in a covered bowl in your refrigerator for 30-60 minutes. This helps to prevent the cookie dough from spreading in the oven and reduces the potential for overly thin/flat cookies. FYI – See the tips section for more tips on how to prevent overly thin cookies.
• Scoop the dough with a tablespoon or cookie dough scoop and place this dough “ball” onto a non-stick baking sheet. You will need at least 2 baking sheets in order to bake all of the cookies at the same time (if they can fit in your oven) or you will need to bake each batch separately (one after the other).
• Leave space of roughly 2-3 inches between each dough ball because the cookies will spread as they bake.
• Optional – Press a few extra chocolate chips & chopped walnuts into the top of each cookie dough “patty” before placing the baking sheet in the oven. This creates an extra chocolaty & nutty appearance to the cookies.
• Bake for 9-11 minutes or until golden brown.
• Remove the baking sheet/tray from the oven. Wear oven mitts. Leave the cookies on the baking sheet to cool for 2-3 minutes. Otherwise, cookies might break when removed from the baking sheet.
• Use a spatula to remove the chocolate chip walnut cookies from the baking sheet and place the cookies on wire cooling racks in order to cool completely.
• Please read the tips section below for extra information on how to make this recipe successfully & to avoid common cookie problems.

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Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies

Helpful Tips

• As I stated above, please do not serve these cookies to anyone with a nut allergy as these cookies contain chopped walnuts. Always check your family and guests for potential food allergies before serving food with nuts.
• The tips below are designed to help cookie “novices” and/or people with limited baking experience. Please read all of the tips in order to ensure that your chocolate chip walnut cookies come out correctly.
• Click on our “print recipe” link if you want to print out this recipe. It includes all of the recipe’s ingredients and instructions. However, the recipe print function does not include our tips section. Please read the tips section in order to avoid common recipe problems.
• This recipe is part of Bread Dad’s series on Easy Cookie Recipes.

• Use FRESH walnuts. After you have opened a bag of chopped walnuts, the walnuts can go rancid (bad) quickly due to their high oil content. Once the walnut package has been opened, you should store the chopped walnuts in an airtight container in your refrigerator or freezer. Do not use old walnuts that have been sitting in your pantry in an already opened bag. You should also check the expiration date on sealed (unopened) walnut packages in order to make sure that they are still good.
• Optional – If you run out of walnuts (or you are tired of walnut-based recipes), you can use chopped pecans as a nice substitute. Be aware that pecans tend to be a little sweeter & drier than walnuts.
• FYI – My kids prefer cookies made with “softer” nuts (such as walnuts and pecans) versus cookies made with “harder” nuts (such as almonds).
• Optional – Boring with “regular” chocolate chip cookies? If you want a little more variety, you can replace 50% of the semi-sweet chocolate chips with milk chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, dried cranberries, etc. Maybe your family would love to try some butterscotch chocolate chip walnut cookies or cranberry chocolate chip walnut cookies!
• Optional – Press some extra chocolate chips & chopped walnuts into the tops of each cookie dough “patty” before you place the cookies in the oven. This will help to make your chocolate chip walnut cookies look even more chocolaty and nutty.
• Visitors – How do you make your chocolate chip walnut cookies even better or more interesting? Please post your tips & ingredient ideas (i.e. extra spices or different types of chocolate) in the comment section below. Your cookie suggestions & recipe variations are a great help to beginning bakers.

• Cookies come out much better if you mix the ingredients with an electric mixer for 1-2 minutes. The cookie dough comes out “creamier”. However, don’t overmix (don’t mix for more than 1-2 minutes) because this could result in problems such as cookies spreading too thin during baking.
• Mixing only by hand can lead to the cookie dough being inadequately blended. This can result in your cookies having unwanted “clumps” of ingredients (i.e. small flour clumps) and/or a gritty texture (inadequately blended sugar grains). Use an electric mixer for 1-2 minutes for the best results.
• Tips to prevent “spreading” (i.e. overly thin cookies) – CHILL THE DOUGH (see tip below), don’t squish the dough flat (higher dough results in higher cookies), use fresh baking soda (cookies made with stale baking soda don’t rise properly), measure the recipe ingredients exactly!! (too much oil results in “runny” dough and flatter cookies), always use cool or room temperature baking sheets (don’t reuse a hot baking sheet to make another batch… i.e. the hot baking sheet that was used to bake your first batch of cookies), don’t overmix the dough (only use an electric mixer for 1-2 minutes), make sure to use the right oven temperature (follow the recipe’s instructions because ovens that are too hot will cause cookies to “melt” too quickly and thus they will spread more than expected), etc.
• Some bakers like to chill the cookie dough in their refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before baking in order to prevent flat/thin cookies. Colder dough results in less spreading. Others like to chill the dough for at least 2 hours in order to improve the taste of the cookie and to reduce potential spreading even further.
• Chilling the dough also makes it easier to shape the cookie dough. It will be less sticky/runny. Thus it is easier to shape into a round cookie with smooth edges.

• DON’T OVERBAKE!!! Overbaked cookies come out hard & dry. Don’t leave the cookies in the oven longer than recommended & don’t use a higher than recommended baking temperature. For the best baking results, you should monitor your oven’s actual temperature (versus relying on an oven dial – which is often inaccurate by 25+ degrees) with an inexpensive oven thermometer.
• Do not substantially reduce the sugar in this recipe. For the best results, always use the ingredient amounts called for by a recipe. Reducing sugar can affect a cookie’s texture and taste. If you make a significant reduction to the sugar quantity then you will get much drier & blander cookies. Sugar helps to retain moisture. For more on this issue, you might like to read this King Arthur Baking article.
• Do not eliminate the brown sugar called for in this recipe (i.e. replace it completely with white granulated sugar). The slight acidity of the brown sugar helps to activate the baking soda (which is needed for softer & airier cookies). Brown sugar also adds a slightly richer taste to cookies.

• Optional – If you are out of butter or you are trying to cut dairy from your family’s diet or you want to cut down on the cost of your cookies (because butter is expensive), you should try my No Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe. This recipe uses vegetable oil instead of butter. You can use it to easily create no butter chocolate chip walnut cookies by replacing some of the chocolate chips with chopped walnuts.
• Use FRESH ingredients (i.e. baking soda and flour) for the best results. For example, if you use stale baking soda, your cookies will not rise properly. The cookies will be flat and dense. In addition, you might find small hard clumps of baking soda (which has a bitter taste) in your cookies. Baking soda & powder is best if used within 6 months of opening the container.
• Try to keep your ingredients (i.e. flour and sugar) in airtight food containers in order to extend their shelf life. This prevents potential contamination by moisture (absorbed via the air), insects, dust, etc.

• You can make the cookie dough balls (drops, spoonfuls, etc.) with 2 tablespoons, a cookie dough scoop or your hands. Some people also like to wear food grade plastic gloves when making cookie dough balls/drops.
• Use of a cookie dough scoop will give you more consistently shaped cookies versus varying sizes from using less “exact” methods such as using a tablespoon or your hands.
• For “rounder” cookies (with no edges sticking out), you can use a cookie dough scoop or mold the cookie dough by hand into round balls and then press down on the dough ball until it turns into a pancake shape.
• For a more “natural” cookie shape, you can scoop the cookie dough with a tablespoon and place the cookie dough “drops” onto the baking sheet without shaping the dough. Your chocolate chip cookies will taste great and just have a few more natural edges and bumps.
• Place the baking tray on the oven’s middle rack for best results. If the baking tray is placed too high or too low in the oven, the baking tray may be too close to the heating element and this could result in overbaked or burnt cookies.

• Historical Fact – According to Wikipedia, in 1938 “Ruth Wakefield invented the chocolate chip cookie. She added chopped up bits from a Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bar into a cookie” and “Andrew Nestlé and Ruth Wakefield made a business arrangement: Wakefield gave Nestlé the right to use her cookie recipe and the Toll House name for one dollar and a lifetime supply of Nestlé chocolate”.
• FYI – Many chocolate chip cookie recipes are some type of variation of the original Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe (which was created in 1938). For more information, you should read the Wikipedia article on Chocolate Chip Cookies.
• If you have a problem with a cookie recipe, please make sure that you are following the recipe exactly (i.e. using the correct oven temperature), using the correct amounts of ingredients (i.e. don’t eyeball the measurements versus using a measuring cup or accidentally add a tablespoon when a teaspoon is called for), using the correct ingredients (i.e. baking soda/powder versus yeast or all purpose flour versus bread flour), etc. Please don’t “wing” things with recipes.
• In case you are looking for more chocolate chip cookie ideas, you might like to try my recipes for Butterscotch Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookies and No Egg Chocolate Chip Cookies.

• My recipes are based on US ingredient measurements (i.e. US cups & tablespoons). However, as a courtesy to our European visitors, I have also included some very ROUGH European equivalents (i.e. grams & milliliters). Since I rarely use European measurements when baking, please let me know in the comment section below if any of the European ingredient measurements need to be changed (i.e. for XYZ ingredient, milliliters are more commonly used versus the grams information listed in the recipe).
• Always wear oven mitts/gloves when dealing with hot ovens, baking trays, etc.
• Please visit Bread Dad’s section on Easy Cookie Recipes if you are looking for more simple & delicious homemade cookie ideas.
• Did you make this recipe? Did it come out great? We would love to see a picture of your baking masterpiece! Please post a photo of it on Instagram and tag it with @BreadDadRecipes

If you liked this recipe, please leave a comment below & give us a 5 star rating. We ALWAYS love to hear from people who have enjoyed our recipes. Jump to comment section

More Bread Dad Recipes

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• Quick Bread Recipes – Pumpkin bread, cranberry bread, etc.
• Cookie Recipes

Reference Sources

• Wikipedia, Chocolate Chip
• Wikipedia, Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Wikipedia, Pecan
• Wikipedia, Walnut

Your fantastic comments motivate us to write more easy & delicious recipes. Also beginning bakers learn a ton from your helpful suggestions, tips and amazing recipe variations. Thank you!

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