Chocolate Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies

Rich, lush, brownie-like Chocolate Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies need to make their way to the top of your to-bake list! The fudgy chocolate flavor is off the charts; this recipe is perfect for any chocoholics among your family or friends. They have a soft, dense texture studded with walnuts for balanced flavor and subtle crunch. Don’t wait, bake these today!

A simple one-bowl dough that starts with melted butter (no planning ahead to soften butter!) and is enriched with an extra egg yolk, plenty of dark cocoa powder, and brown sugar is a recipe for cookie success.  The cookies are so intensely chocolatey that they beg for a glass of milk, but I haven’t met anyone with complaints yet!

Love the idea of double chocolate chip cookies? Try these Chocolate Chocolate Chip Peppermint Cookies during the holiday season, or any time you want a balance of intense chocolate with fresh peppermint flavor.

Ingredients

I include ingredient notes here when I think they’ll be helpful, including ways to source, any preparation tips, or why I've chosen a particular ingredient. Be sure to check out the recipe card below for the full list of ingredients and their quantities!

• Salted Butter - We keep salted butter on hand at all times, so I developed this recipe with that in mind. I use salted butter from Costco most often. If you only have unsalted butter simply add ¼ teaspoon of table salt to your wet ingredients when making the dough.
• Brown Sugar and Granulated Sugar - This recipe has both brown and granulated sugars, but a much higher proportion of brown sugar. Brown sugar adds a hint of molasses flavor and keeps the cookies extra soft and dense.
• Egg plus Egg Yolk -  Adding an egg plus an additional egg yolk makes for a richer cookie with a softer brownie like texture. These cookies are so soft, thanks to the double yolks.
• All-Purpose Flour - The moderate protein content in all-purpose flour is perfect for a soft and chewy cookie texture and it’s what we always have on hand.
• Dark Cocoa Powder - Use a Dutch processed dark cocoa powder here, like Hershey’s Special Dark (my pantry staple!) or King Arthur’s black cocoa powder, for the richest chocolate flavor. Dutch process cocoa is treated to reduce the acidity and produces a smoother chocolate flavor.
• Baking Powder - Because of the dutched cocoa, a bit of acidity is needed for lift in these cookies. Adding baking powder means you are adding both baking soda and tartaric acid to your dough at the same time!
• Chocolate Chips - Use semisweet or milk chocolate chips to get your double dose of chocolate in these cookies.
• Walnuts -  Walnuts are earthy, slightly bitter with tannins, and buttery, and they create a terrific balance with the sweet chocolatey flavor in the cookies. We buy walnuts in bulk at Costco (for Muhammara and Apple and Blackberry Crumble, too!), but keep them in the freezer for storage. This helps prevent the fats in the walnuts from going rancid.

Prepare the Cookie Dough

Melt the butter in a large mixing bowl in the microwave.  Alternatively, melt the butter in a small saucepan on the stove top and transfer it to a mixing bowl.

Add the egg, egg yolk, brown sugar, granulated sugar, and vanilla to the melted butter.

Mix the wet ingredients well with a wooden spoon until everything is smooth, smashing any lumps in your brown sugar and making sure the eggs are well incorporated.

Sprinkle the flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder over the wet ingredients and stir well to combine everything.

Add the chocolate chips and the chopped walnuts to the dough. Stir well to distribute the nuts and chocolate evenly. If desired, reserve a handful of the chocolate and nuts to add to the tops of the cookie dough balls before baking.

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and chill it for at least an hour.

Bake the Cookies

When the dough is almost ready, preheat the oven to 350°F and line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Wadding the paper up in a ball and then stretching it out over the sheet pan will help it mold to the shape of the pan better.

Use a cookie scoop to portion the dough onto the sheet pan, spacing the cookies apart by 2 inches.  You can also roll generous tablespoons of the dough between your hands if you don’t have a cookie scoop.

If you reserved any mix-ins for the tops of the cookies, press the chocolate chips or walnuts into the top of the dough. This ensures these ingredients are front and center in the baked cookies.

Bake the cookies for 11-13 minutes, until the edges are firm and the centers start to look matte. They won’t spread much. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to sit on the hot pan for 3 additional minutes to finish baking.

You can use a glass to shape the cookies into more perfect circles. Place the glass over each cookie and swirl in a circular motion about 5-6 times.  Do this right after the three minutes of resting on the pan so that the cookies aren’t too cool that they will break apart.

Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool further.

Allow the cookies to cool completely on the rack before attempting to move them to a serving dish or storage container. Sneaking one for a chef’s snack is 100% advised.

Substitutions and Variations

The substitutions listed below have been tested in this recipe and work well. If you successfully make any other ingredient substitutions, let us know in the comments!

• Add Sea Salt - If you love a bit of salty balance to your sweet cookies, add sea salt! Sprinkle a few grains of coarse sea salt under each ball of cookie dough before baking.  The salt bakes into the dough and when you take a bite of the finished cookie the salt hits your tongue in the perfect way!  You can also sprinkle the tops of the unbaked cookie dough balls with the coarse sea salt.
• Use Chocolate Chunks or Chopped Chocolate - Chop up your favorite chocolate bar or use chocolate chunks to create larger pools of chocolate in the cookies.
• Swap Walnuts for Pecans - Pecans are a close second in these chocolate chocolate chip cookies for providing a nutty balance to the flavor.  Feel free to swap them for the walnuts in the recipe.

Equipment

These cookies come together in one bowl with a simple wooden spoon, no special equipment is required!  For some details on my favorite kitchen gear for this recipe, see these notes:

• Cookie Scoop - A cookie scoop makes portioning cookie dough a cinch.  I don’t even roll the balls of dough between my hands, just pack the scoop and release it to the baking sheet!  Cooke scoops are great for making meatballs, scooping ice cream, portioning out sticky things like peanut butter or frosting, and transferring wet batters (like muffins and cupcakes) to baking tins.  Scoops are labeled with their size based on how many scoops you’d get in a quart of dough.  My favorite is a #50, which holds about 1.25 tablespoons of dough.
• Wooden Spoons - I purchased my favorite wooden spoon in college and still use the same one to this day!  The one pictured in this post is especially good because of its angled head. It's great for scraping along the edges of pots or the bottom of bowls.  Wooden spoons are sturdy enough for thick cookie dough prep.

Serving Suggestions

These chocolate chocolate chip cookies are rich and fudgy, just like brownies, so a tall glass of milk is the perfect accompaniment!  They are great for dessert or after-school snacks, but really hit the spot for late-night chocolate cravings.

Storage

These chocolate chocolate chip walnut cookies will keep in an airtight container for up to a week.  The texture of the cookies gets softer and more brownie-like the longer they hang out, but we’ve never had a batch last longer than a few days.  These cookies also make a great gift when boxed up for friends and family.

Make Ahead Options

Roll and freeze cookies for easy and quick dessert cravings later! Portion out the cookie dough onto a parchment-lined pan and place the pan into the freezer. Once the dough balls are solid, transfer them to a zip-topped bag and freeze. To bake the cookies, place them straight from the freezer onto a parchment-lined pan with two-inch spacing. Bake for 13-15 minutes.