We love cookies, and we love air fryers (who doesn’t?), so it makes perfect sense that we’d try to bake a batch of crunchy and gooey cookies over the weekend, especially since it’ll limit our spending on ready-made cookies and satisfy our need for a snack.
There is a great shop next door that bakes and sells delicious cookies, which sets the bar way too high to hit. Armed with one of the best air fryers, an unabashed attitude and an appetite for all things sweet, we tracked down this cookie recipe on Instagram from @airfryingfoodi (Opens in a new tab) For some guidance before falling into the store’s locker.
As it turns out, social media and the web are awash with air fryer cookie recipes, all of which pretty much use the same basic ingredients (eggs, sugar, butter, flour, and raising agent) and follow the same method. As always, you can improvise or make modifications if you don’t have a particular ingredient on hand, or if your local store doesn’t stock it. The recipe we followed uses chocolate chips, but we used milk and white chocolate buttons instead because our corner store ran out of the former.
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Air fryer chocolate cookies recipe
After a quick online search, we landed on a recipe from @airfryingfoodie on Instagram. It seemed so easy to follow and (almost) deceiving. The recipe even looked similar to my air fryer chocolate chip cookies (Opens in a new tab) The recipe is on the Air Frying Foodie website, so, rest assured, we went for it.
We used a dessert spoon to measure out the cookie dough balls, which made a total of 22 cookies. If you want half as many cookies, or don’t have time to cook them today, you can freeze any leftover dough for up to three months.
For sticky cookies, reduce the cooking time by a minute or two. Do you like it more crunchy? Increase the cooking time by one minute.
Air fryer chocolate chip cookie ingredients
Here are the ingredients you’ll need for these air fryer cookies, according to @airfryingfoodie:
ingredients:
- Half a cup of unsalted butter
- 1 cup of sugar
- Half a cup of brown sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 cups of all-purpose flour
- Half a teaspoon of salt
- Half a teaspoon of baking soda
- 1 cup white chocolate chips (replaced with white chocolate buttons)
- ½ cup crushed candy canes or mint candy bars (replaced with 1 cup of milk chocolate buttons)
How to make a chocolate chip cookie in an air fryer
As with baking most items, preparation is key. Make sure you have all of your ingredients ready and in the right amounts.
We used the Swan Retro 6L manual air fryer (Opens in a new tab). Depending on your air fryer, you may need to adjust the temperature a few degrees and the timer settings a few minutes.
Step 1: Combine butter and sugar in a medium bowl. We used a spoon, but you can also use a hand mixer. Whisk until the mixture is smooth and creamy.
Step 2: Add the eggs, vanilla, salt, baking soda and 1 cup of the flour. Mix until the dry and wet ingredients are combined.
Step 3: Add the remaining flour and mix until combined.
The fourth step: Once you’ve made the dough, add the chocolate buttons and stir through the dough until it’s evenly distributed.
Fifth step: Use a small cookie spoon or dessert spoon to roughly shape the dough. Place the dough balls on parchment paper in the tray of the air fryer. Leave 1 inch / 2.4 cm between each ball of dough to allow enough room for spreading.
Sixth step: Air fry for 5-7 minutes at 300°F/150°C until the edges are crispy and the bottoms are no longer doughy.
Seventh step: Leave the cookies in the basket for a minute or two before moving to a cooling rack.
Air Fryer Chocolate Chip Cookies Referee
We learned a lot from our air fryer baking experience when following this recipe. The first is that we can only make four or five cookies at a time; to bake All The cookie dough took about 1 hour. Plus, as a result of the size of the air fryer basket—and not wanting to spend more than an hour baking—the size of our cookies wasn’t impressive.
We stretched our cookie dough and air fryer to the max when we went a little off-piste and added cocoa powder. The dough lost its elasticity and began to fall apart. We were able to salvage it (a bit) by adding more butter, but the baked results were far from perfect. Next time, we will follow these cookies (Opens in a new tab) recipe instead.
With all that said, it was still fun to bake cookies in an air fryer. I’m sure it would take a few more tries (not a bad thing) to get the absolutely perfect cookie with a gooey center and crunchy edge, adjusting the timing and temperature.
If you’re looking to make more baking in an air fryer, why not try your hand at this Instagram gingerbread recipe and follow us on this TikTok air fryer recipe for healthy honey garlic chicken tenders.