Chocolate Chip Pan Cookies

This is a chocolate chip cookie that’s done with the bake-three-batches-and-rotate-the-pans routine. The same Toll House-style dough (butter, brown sugar, white sugar, vanilla, chocolate chips, nuts) gets pressed into a single sheet pan and baked once. Twenty minutes later you’ve got 24 thick squares ready to cut.

The texture lands somewhere between a cookie and a blondie. Chewy in the middle, slightly crisp at the edges, with the buttery brown sugar character that makes a chocolate chip cookie taste like a chocolate chip cookie. The bigger surface area means more browned tops per square, which is arguably the best part of any cookie.

A full pound of butter (a cup) plus 1½ cups of total sugar gives this dough the richness it needs to hold up at sheet-cake scale without going dry around the edges. The full teaspoon of baking soda lifts it just enough that the squares stay tender, not dense.

Pro Tips

• Use a 15½ x 10½ inch jelly roll pan, not a half-sheet pan. The deeper sides matter; a half-sheet spreads the dough too thin and you get crackers.
• Press the dough firmly and evenly into the corners. Thin spots overbake while thick centers stay raw.
• Pull the pan when the edges are golden but the center still looks slightly underdone. The carryover heat finishes the middle without overcooking the edges.
• Cool completely before cutting. Warm bars tear instead of slicing into clean squares.
• Use a pizza wheel or a long sharp knife in one decisive motion. Sawing crumbles the cookies.

Variations

• Swap chocolate chips for half white chocolate and half dark for a two-toned chip cookie.
• Use pecans, walnuts or skip nuts entirely and double the chips if you have nut-averse eaters.
• Sprinkle flaky sea salt over the top in the last 5 minutes of baking for the sweet-salty bakery look.