Most chocolate chip cookie recipes call for the same 8-10 ingredients: butter, sugar (brown and white), eggs, vanilla, flour, leavening (usually baking soda), salt and chocolate chip. This is pretty simple, but there are different things you can tweak to produce different results in your cookies.

1. Butter is flavor, so keep that in mind when baking. Shortening will work, and the cookies will look pretty, but they’ll lack flavor.

2. You can use unsalted butter when baking your cookies in order to control the amount of salt in the recipe.

3. Soften your butter, but not too soft. Soft butter makes it easier to handle and cream together with the other ingredients, but too soft butter can cause your cookies to end up greasy and/or oily. The best way to get the right balance is to cut the butter into small slices and let it sit out for a half hour or so. Microwaving the butter to soften it often causes it to unevenly soften.

4. Using all white sugar will usually give you hard cookies, and all brown sugar gives you chewy cookies. The best way to approach baking your cookies is by using the proper ratio of the two sugars, which is often detailed out in your recipe. As a general rule of thumb, though, use mostly brown sugar with a little white.

5. Make sure your eggs are at room temperature. Cold eggs added to the ingredient mixture could make it curdle, which could affect how the cookies bake. You can warm up the eggs prior to adding them by letting them sit in a bowl of warm water for about ten minutes.

6. Salt matters. It’s a big flavor-enhancer, especially in sweets. Using unsalted butter means you can control this important ingredient, so make sure you measure correctly and learn by trial and error with the right proportion to the other ingredients. Helpful hint: if you use unsalted butter, use about a quarter teaspoon less salt than your recipe calls for.

7. Try baking your cookies on parchment paper instead of on the bare baking sheet. Silicone baking mats and parchment paper bake your cookies evenly and it’s easier to clean up.

8. Use a spring-loaded ice cream scoop to make your cookie drops evenly and safe yourself from a larger mess than necessary.

9. If your cookies tend to spread out during baking, you can try chilling the dough before cooking or cooking them at a lower temperature.

10. For cake-like cookies, change up your recipe by using an extra egg, a quarter to a half cup less sugar, a little more flour and a tablespoon of milk.

The above information was provided, in part, by an article featured on DesignMom.com.