Save Chocolate Chips To Fill Bare Spots Once Your Cookies Come Out Of The Oven

Elena Veselova/Shutterstock

When many of us bake chocolate chip cookies, we're not as focused on how the cookies will look when they emerge from the oven. The point of whipping up a batch is to get them in our mouths as quickly as possible. Truthfully, sometimes the dough doesn't even make it to the oven before being consumed, and since this isn't exactly safe, you should stick to 5-ingredient edible cookie dough instead. But if you want the best of both worlds, that is, cookies that both taste and look great, all you need are a few extra chocolate chips.

For magazine-worthy chocolate chip cookies, stud the tops of your mounds of cookie dough with some chocolate chips and gently push them in so they stick. When the cookies bake in the oven, these chips will remain on top, gently melting without fading into the cookie. When you pull the baked cookies out of the oven, the chips will be soft and glistening, making the cookies look especially appealing. If there are nuts or oatmeal in your dough, do the same thing; place a few chopped or whole nuts and a scattering of oats right on top with the extra chips.

Ward Dewitt/Getty Images

While using the same type of chips in your cookie dough to garnish the tops of them makes complete sense, you can have some fun with different flavors, too. For example, if you've made traditional chocolate chip cookies, stud the tops with some salted caramel, cinnamon, or butterscotch chips. Each cookie will have just a hint of these flavors, so you don't have to worry about it being overpowering.

If you're making a chocolate cookie dough with cocoa powder (Dutch cocoa powder will yield extra chocolatey cookies), press some white chocolate or (if you can find them) beautifully pink ruby chocolate chips into the tops. The color contrast will look gorgeous. Some people might prefer to make their chocolate chip cookie dough with chocolate chunks, and the same tip applies as far as studding the tops of your dough before it's baked. In fact, placing some chocolate chunks on top will give you larger, more gooey melted puddles of chocolate on each cookie, and that's never a bad thing.