Hard Boiled Egg Chocolate Chip Cookies are the most delicious way to use leftover hard boiled eggs. And no one will ever know because these cookies are soft and fluffy and perfect. In fact, this might even become your new favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.
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You’re Going to Love These
Weirdly delicious. Let’s just call a spade a spade here, shall we? This is odd— no doubt. The first time I made these cookies was for a brunch-themed potluck at work. I thought I was being clever. And everyone had to try one— just to see what in the heck this hard-boiled-egg-cookie-thing was all about. But the seconds and thirds were because they were goshdarn delicious. So plan on the same thing happening when you bring these to your next potluck.
Fun way to use hard boiled eggs. If you’re up to your eyeballs in leftover hard boiled eggs, you can skip right over the egg salad sandwiches, potato salad, Cobb salads— all the salads — and just plan on making chocolate chip cookies. Because wouldn’t you rather have a cookie, anyway?
The best chocolate chip cookie recipe. Don’t be fooled by this recipe. It isn’t just some hack or cutesy way to use your hard boiled eggs. This is legitimately a solid recipe that results in the perfectly soft-baked cookie.
Ingredient Notes
Butter. Why use softened butter instead of melted butter in chocolate chip cookies? Softened butter will allow you to cream it with the sugar, which creates air in your batter and results in a more tender, cakier cookie. Melted butter can make the cookies greasy, as well as flatter and chewier.
When you “soften” your butter, you really just want it to be at room temperature. I don’t rely on my microwave setting for softening butter because it softens it more than I need for baking purposes. For spreading on toast, it would be perfect. A stick of butter needs to sit out for about 30-60 minutes to get to room temperature. So you can move things along by cutting into small pieces or even grating it with a box grater.
Brown and white sugar. I like to use a blend of brown sugar and white sugar in chocolate chip cookies. Too much white sugar and the result is a little pale and not as flavorful. Too much brown sugar and it takes on a caramelly flavor —- not that that’s a bad thing — and a darker color.
Read this to see what happens if you play around with the blend of white and brown sugar. They recommend a 50/50 split, but I like a little more of the brown sugar flavor.
If you ever run out of brown sugar mid-recipe, don’t fret. For each cup of brown sugar you need, just mix 1 cup of white sugar with 1 tablespoon of molasses or maple syrup.
Hard boiled eggs. I make my hard boiled eggs using this fool-proof method. And I admit, I’ve made a batch for the sole purpose of making these cookies. Because they’re that good. But maybe you still have a few leftovers from your batch of Instant Pot hard boiled eggs, or, you know, Easter.
Chocolate chips. 2 cups of chocolate chips will give you A LOT of chocolate per cookie. Which is just the way I like it. Of course, you can also add nuts or raisins or whatever else you love in your chocolate chip cookies.
How to Make Hard Boiled Egg Chocolate Chip Cookies
Preheat the oven to 375.
Finely chop the hard boiled eggs. I mash the hard boiled eggs with the back of a fork. You can also press them through a sieve.
Prepare baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats to keep your cookies from spreading.
With an electric mixer, cream the softened butter and sugars together. Add the hard boiled eggs, salt, and vanilla. Mix well.
Sift the flour and baking soda together into a small bowl. Fold the flour into the cookie mixture, then beat until mixed together.
Stir in the chocolate chips.
Drop cookie dough by the spoonful onto your baking sheets. Bake for 9-10 minutes or until the edges just start to turn brown. Let the cookies cool for 3-5 minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
Your chocolate chip cookies will be soft on the inside, slightly crispy on the edges, and no one will have any idea they were made with hard boiled eggs.
Recipe Tips
Creaming the butter and sugar. It’s tempting to whip the daylights out of the butter and sugar — because you do want to create those necessary air pockets in your dough. But overmixing can add too much air which will cause your cookies to rise, then fall and become flat, thin, and crispy. Cream the butter and sugar until it’s light and fluffy. And then stop.
Mixing in the flour. Just like creaming the butter and sugar, overmixing the flour can overwork the glutens and create a tough cookie. How do you know when to stop mixing your flour? When only a few streaks of flour remain in the dough. They’ll get mixed in when you stir in your chocolate chips.
Chill the cookie dough, if needed. It isn’t necessary to chill your cookie dough before baking unless it’s warm in your kitchen. If your dough feels really soft and won’t hold its shape when you portion it on your baking sheet, put it in the refrigerator to chill for 30 minutes or until it’s firm enough to keep its scoop shape.
Scooping out your cookies. I use a dough scooper for a couple of reasons. First, it ensures that each cookie will be the same size and, as long as I space them properly on the cookie sheet, they won’t run together. Second, I can mound the dough pretty high which will result in thicker cookies.
How to Keep Cookies from Spreading
If your cookies come out of the oven too thin, flat, and running into one another, there are a few things that might be to blame. These are all based on my own experiences, and there might be other causes I haven’t yet bumped into.
- Use parchment paper or a baking mat. Both of these baking pan liners will help prevent cookies from sticking and make clean-up a snap. They also give the cookie dough something to grab onto so they will rise nicely and keep from getting too brown. I tried this recipe with both parchment paper and silicone baking mats and got identical results — cookies that rose in place and browned evenly.
- Cool down your pans. When your recipe makes dozens of cookies, you’re going to use your same pans over and over. Just be sure to cool them down in between bakes. A too warm pan is sure to cause the dough to spread.
- Chill your dough. If you’re baking on a hot day or your kitchen is warm, go ahead and throw your dough in the refrigerator for 15-30 minutes to let it chill. Dough that’s too warm will spread more easily than chilled dough.
- Mound the cookie dough. I like to scoop my cookie dough with a portioned scooper — because I’m quite terrible at eyeing these things up. But also because I can create a tall mound of dough that will keep them from spreading out.
- Carefully measure the sugar. When I first tweaked this recipe from my great-grandmother’s recipe card, I used waaaaayyyyy too much sugar. As in, twice what the recipe ended up with. And I got flat, greasy, thin cookies. My “taste-tester” said they were scrumptious, however.
- Use room temperature butter. Butter that has been “softened” using the special buttons on the microwave will be too soft. Room temperature butter is a bit firmer than you might imagine. It’s not melted —- at all. If you forget to take your butter out in advance, like I do all the time, cut it into slices and let it sit on the counter for about 30 minutes. If it doesn’t feel chilled to the touch and dents when you press your finger into it, it’s ready!
Inspiration For These Cookies
When I create recipes, I draw inspiration from so many places, it’s almost hard to nail down the root source. But this time, it’s easy. Challenge Dairy was where I got the idea in the first place. But I made some tweaks, based on an old family chocolate chip cookie recipe I found in my great-grandmother’s recipe box.
More Delicious Cookie Recipes
📖 Recipe
Hard Boiled Egg Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 sticks softened butter
- ¾ cup brown sugar
- ⅓ cup white sugar
- 2 hard boiled eggs, finely chopped
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 ½ cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 cups chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375.
- Finely chop the hard boiled eggs. I mash the hard boiled eggs with the back of a fork. You can also press them through a sieve.
- Prepare baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats to keep your cookies from spreading.
- With an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugars together. Add the hard boiled eggs, salt, and vanilla. Mix well.
- Sift the flour and baking soda together into a small bowl. Fold the flour into the cookie mixture, then beat until mixed together.
- Stir in the chocolate chips.
- Drop cookie dough by the spoonful onto your baking sheets. Bake for 9-10 minutes or until the edges just start to turn brown. Let the cookies cool for 3-5 minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Your chocolate chip cookies will be soft on the inside, slightly crispy on the edges, and no one will have any idea they were made with hard boiled eggs.
- This recipe makes about 3 dozen cookies.
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