Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies — 🍪🙌🏻🤎These soft batch cookies are made with a combination of butter and cream cheese, which makes them extra rich and delicious! I like to make mine using a combination of chocolate chips and chunks, and you can even use M&M’s in these!
Table of Contents
Soft Baked Chocolate Chip Cookies (with Cream Cheese!)
I’ve been wanting to bake cream cheese into cookies for ages. I finally did. And I’m in love with the results.
I adapted my favorite Chocolate Chip and Chunk Cookies recipe and replaced some of the butter with cream cheese and am in love with the results.
My favorite recipe calls for 3/4 cup of butter, and for these soft batch chocolate chip cookies I used a combination of 1/2 cup butter and 1/4 cup cream cheese. You wouldn’t think that just a simple quarter-cup swap of butter for cream cheese would effect results that much, but it did.
These chocolate chip cream cheese cookies are so soft, moist, and with a richness to the dough like no other cookies I’ve tried.
Ingredients for Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies
If you’ve never made chocolate chip cookies with cream cheese before, you’re in for a treat! You’ll need just a handful of pantry staples:
- Unsalted butter
- Cream cheese
- Light brown sugar
- Granulated sugar
- Egg
- Vanilla extract
- All-purpose flour
- Cornstarch
- Baking soda
- Salt
- Semi-sweet chocolate chips
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
How to Make Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies
The steps for this chocolate chip cookie recipe with cream cheese couldn’t be simpler!
- Cream together the cream cheese, butter, sugars, and vanilla extract. Whip the mixture on medium-high speed until it’s light and fluffy. Don’t just mix it all together, it must be light and fluffy before moving onto the next step!
- Add in the dry ingredients and scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure everything gets incorporated.
- Scoop the cookie dough into large balls and refrigerate for at least 2 hours before baking.
- Bake the cookies for no more than 10 minutes, then let cool for 5 minutes on the baking tray before transferring to a wire rack.
Cookie FAQs
It makes them super soft and moist! In this particular recipe, the dough seems more buttery — which is ironic since there’s actually less butter used, not more. The cream cheese cookies are super soft without being cakey, and remind me of soft batch cookies. The edges are slightly chewy, and the thick interiors are soft, tender, and moist.
I can’t taste the cream cheese, but it adds depth, density, and richness that my regular chocolate chip cookies don’t have.
Use full-fat cream cheese in a block. Do NOT use light, fat-free, or a whipped cream cheese because your dough will become runny. I tried the recipe with some light cream cheese I had on hand, and the cookies baked thinner and spread.
You can use a hand mixer and a bowl if that’s all you have, but I prefer using a stand mixer with a paddle attachment because you can prepare other parts of the recipe while it’s busy mixing. I use the Kitchenaid 7-quart tilt head mixer, which you can get on Amazon. They’re worth the investment in my opinion!
Technically, you can omit the cornstarch, but your cookies won’t turn out as soft. To make these cream cheese chocolate chip cookies soft batch-style, the cornstarch is needed.
I made these as classic chocolate chip cream cheese cookies, but I bet you could add extra mix-ins if desired. Chopped nuts, M&M’s, or your favorite chopped up candy bar would all be good additions. Just be sure to add no more than 2 1/4 cups mix-ins total. 
Yes, if you want to make soft batch chocolate chip cookies with cream cheese you MUST chill the dough first. Make sure to chill your dough for at least 2 hours before you bake to ensure your cookies bake thick and puffy. Warm, limp dough bakes into limpy and wimpy cookies. I want my cookies to be thick, with puffy centers that are overflowing with chocolate.
I used a 2-inch cookie scoop to make my cookies because I like them really big. If you don’t have a cookie scoop, use a large spoon and your hands. Just try to make your cookies all the same size so they bake evenly!
Recipe Video Tutorial
Softbatch Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies
Video
Equipment
Ingredients
- ½ cup unsalted butter, softened
- ¼ cup cream cheese, softened*
- ¾ cup light brown sugar, packed
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt, optional and to taste
- 2 ¼ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips or chunks**
Instructions
- To the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter, cream cheese (measure it by smooshing it into a 1/4-cup measure), sugars, egg, vanilla, and beat on medium-high speed until well-creamed, light and fluffy, about 5 minutes (or use an electric hand mixer and beat for at least 7 minutes).
- Stop, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and add the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, optional salt, and mix until just combined, about 1 minute.
- Add chocolate chips and chunks, and beat momentarily to incorporate, or fold in by hand.
- Using a medium 2-inch cookie scoop, form heaping mounds (I made 28). Place mounds on a large plate, flatten mounds slightly with your palm, cover with plasticwrap, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or up to 5 days, before baking. Do not bake with warm dough because cookies will spread and bake thinner and flatter.
- Preheat oven to 350F, line a baking sheet with a Silpat Non-Stick Baking Mat or spray with cooking spray and place mounds on baking sheet, spaced at least 2 inches apart (I bake 8 cookies per sheet).
- Bake for 8 to 9 minutes, or until edges have set and tops are just beginning to set, even if slightly undercooked, pale and glossy in the center. Do not bake longer than 10 minutes as cookies will firm up as they cool.
- Allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing and transferring to a rack to finish cooling.***
- Cookies will keep airtight at room temperature for up to 1 week, or in the freezer for up to 3 months. Alternatively, unbaked cookie dough can be stored airtight in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, so consider baking only as many cookies as desired and save the remaining dough to be baked in the future when desired.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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More Cookies Made with Cream Cheese:
ALL OF MY CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE RECIPES!
Cream Cheese Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cookies — Cream cheese keeps them super soft! Say hello to your new fave chocolate cookie!!
Black and White Cream Cheese Cookies — These cookies combine two favorites in one! Soft, moist, buttery, creamy Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies are paired with fudgy, intensely chocolaty, and not overly sweet Dark Chocolate Dark Brown Sugar Cookies.
Cream Cheese White Chocolate Chip Cookies — These soft and chewy white chocolate chip cookies use two special ingredients to achieve their pillowy texture: instant pudding mix and cream cheese!
Cream Cheese Cookies — Big, soft, buttery cookies with sweet and tangy cream cheese in the middle!! Oh my….Best thumbprints ever!!!
Softbatch Glazed Lemon Cream Cheese Cookies — Big, bold lemon flavor packed into super soft cookies thanks to the cream cheese!! Tangy-sweet perfection! Lemon lovers are going to adore these easy cookies!!
I do not like chocolate and I do not like chocolate chip cookies. However, I am a baker so I bake chocolate items and have to taste the finished product. Chocolate chip cookies are my nemesis. It is the one cookie that I fail at no matter what recipe I try. Maybe because I dont like the taste, so I think my try is a fail. I would combined 2 recipes to create the best choc chip cookies. Well, that nonsense is OVER because you have given me THE choc chip cookie recipe! I ate the whole cookie, it was so good!
I used half dark chocolate and half semi-sweet chips. Also, had to bake a few minutes longer – every oven is different. They turned out perfect and tasty. Thanks!
Thank you for letting me know that my recipe helped solve your choc chip cookie baking issues and that these are a new favorite and turned out perfectly for you!
Love, love, love these cookies! I’ve been searching for a recipe for thick, soft cookies and these are absolute perfection! Who says cookies aren’t for breakfast?! Can’t wait to try your Softbatch Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies next.
Thanks for the 5 star review Gwen and I love that you’re really loving these cookies! And most definitely love the way you think about cookies and breakfast 🍪👍🏻!
I made these for valentines to give away to friends and they loved them! Thanks for the recipe
Thanks for the 5 star review Genia and I’m so pleased to hear these were a hit with your friends! How thoughtful of you to bake for them!
These cookies are the absolute best cookies I have ever made!!! You are a genius!
Thank you, Stacy for the five star review and I love hearing that these are the best cookies you’ve ever made! This is so lovely to hear! 🍪
One of the best cookies I’ve made!
Thank you Tabitha! I love hearing this and thanks for taking the time to leave a review!
Confused about cooking time. Do you turn them at 8-10 minutes? or is that the total baking time?
First rule of baking: Always bake until done and don’t worry what the clock says.
You can rotate the pan midway through the total bake time, which is about 8-10 minutes, if you’d like. Most people do not have an oven that bakes evenly, therefore this is recommended.
Second rule of baking: If your cookies are not done at 8-10 minutes, see the first rule of baking. Bake until they are.
Enjoy!
Made this four times now and I never chilled the dough and they never spread. I have to flatten the dough a bit because they keep their shape out of the scoop.
Thanks for trying the cookie recipe and if your cookies never spread, and you don’t have to chill the dough, and you’re OK with flattening them a little bit, then I’d say just leave things alone. However, when dough behaves like this is usually means it’s dense or dry which likely how you’re measuring your flour, the brand you’re using, or your climate could all be contributing and you could probably scale back by 2-4 tbsp on the flour if you want them to flatter more on their own.
These are my go to chocolate chip cookie now. Everyone raves about them every time. They’re easy to make too which is a huge plus.
Thanks for the 5 star review, Colby, and I love hearing this is your go-to CCC now! And that they’re easy and get rave reviews – wonderful to hear!
Recipe was great! The only change that I made in preparation was that I used left over Halloween candy bars (Snickers) instead of the chocolate chips. I chopped up the candy bars to be roughly the size of chocolate chips (or chunks). They made great cookies that were eaten by everyone very quickly.
Thanks for the five star review Dave and I’m glad to hear that you got resourceful with your leftover snickers and the cookies were gobbled up! I’m a big fan of recycling Halloween, Christmas, or Easter candy into desserts!
https://www.averiecooks.com/soft-and-chewy-snickers-chocolate-chip-cookies/
https://www.averiecooks.com/snickers-chocolate-chip-blondies/
You can basically use any candy in those base recipes that you want. M&Ms, 3 Musketeers, Milky Way, etc.
They were a Hit Absolutely Brilliant!
and then they were Gone. Vanished!
My only question is will the all equivalents in the original single batch recipe remain the same , only doubled if I were to make a double batch? Thank You
Thanks for the five star review Erik and I’m glad that these cookies were absolutely brilliant and that they vanished! And yes, if you want to double the recipe, you double all of the ingredients. Enjoy the bigger batch!
I’ve tried so many chocolate chip cookie recipes and this is our favorite. I’ve been making them for years! I always get rave reviews when I take them to gatherings. I’ve even been told they are like crack because you can’t stop eating them!
Thanks for the five star review Alysha and I love hearing that you get rave reviews on these and that you’ve been making them for years and that people can’t stop eating them! Thank you for sharing your great photos, makes me want to bake a batch!
Was this an original recipe from back in the early 2000s/2010s?
Yes it is my original recipe from approx 2011. Photography has not been changed, nor has the recipe itself, although I’ve updated the post body text to be a bit more streamlined and less wordy. Just curious, why do you ask? Have you been making it all these years?
Yes actually. I made them for the first time during that year. And I couldn’t remember the recipe I just remembered parts. I threw what I knew into chatgbt and your name popped up. The picture looked familiar but I wanted to make sure I was getting it from the original. It has been 14 years!! Thank you!
I love that you’ve been making these cookies 14 YEARS!!!! Yep, this is the recipe and same photography! Glad you recognized it! That’s one reason I never change my photographs (despite ‘expert advice’ to do so at times) and I am impressed my name popped up in the chatbot. All the stars aligned! Glad you’re reunited with this recipe 🙏🏻
Amazing cookies. Make for my family every week. Thank you
Thanks for the five star review, Darlene, and I’m glad that you love these and that you make them for your family every week! How sweet!
Cookies are great! time consuming with a bunch of the ingredients having to come to room temp, and chilling times, etcetera. To avoid this per batch, I make a bunch of batches… like 5 OR 6 at a time with different add ins, such as chocolate chips, resees pieces, English toffee, white chocolate nuts/no nuts. I cook a few of each to eat right then, but then I use a cookie scoop to make balls, then freeze them on a cookie sheet. Once frozen I put them in a zip lock freezer bag. They last way longer than 3 months. I am.baking some right now, that have been in the freezer since last summer.they are just as good now as they were year ago. 😀
Hi Kelly, thanks for the five star review and I’m glad you enjoy the cookies! I agree with you on many aspects, including the fact that when you are baking that planning ahead so that everything can come to room temperature takes some foreseight, but it just is what it is in baking. I love that you batch this recipe and make a very large batch at one time!
And I agree, they do last longer than three months in the freezer. However, if I say things like that, I get the freshness police on my tail and people tend to freak out about longer-term food storage. Although in reality, I think it’s completely fine to go longer than three months as you have figured out but everyone differs on that. Glad you’re enjoying some from a long time ago!
I found the dough to be very stiff. Wonder if 2 eggs instead of 1 would be better. Only used 2 cups chocolate chips…more would have been very
difficult to work with. Refrigerating for 2 hrs. seemed too long, as the
dough was quite hard when baking…did not seem to want to brown at all.
Hi Emily this is an extremely popular recipe for me with hundreds of comments and normally people don’t have an issue. I am wondering if you measured your flour with a heavy hand and packed it in the cup? Try laying it in lightly next time and not hard-packing it. The fact that the dough was hard and stiff suggests over-flouring as I am analyzing from afar.
The other issue (less likely) is that you may have used an egg that was smaller than a standard ‘large egg’ but with that, we are talking teaspoons of difference in liquid volume and so that’s not as likely.
I am not into chocolate chip cookies, but I made this for my granddaughters and I am hooked!!
They were heavenly delicious !
They melt in your mouth.
I bake one everyday after work…trying not to eat all of them an once.
Thanks for the 5 star review, Victoria, and I love that you’re baking 1 a day. GREAT idea! I suggest this to readers (for me it’s 2 or 3, I can’t do just one LOL). I am glad your granddaughters love them too!