Martha-Stewart-Fired-Me Cookies

Martha-Stewart-Fired-Me cookies are absolute perfection. Crisp edges, chewy center, flaky sea salt, and lots of chocolate chips. Made famous after Sarah Gormley shared the recipe in her book, The Order of Things.

If you like trying famous chocolate chip cookie recipes, I have an entire collection of famous copycat recipes from Chick-fil-A to Subway and copycat Levain to Snoop Dogg!

I stumbled across this cookie recipe a while back and had to try it! Talk about a catchy title. When I found out that Sarah made 38 batches of chocolate chip cookies to perfect her recipe I wanted to try them even more.

She shared, "I can’t tell you the whole story of getting fired, because, well, we all love Martha, don’t we? We do. You just need to know that after she fired me and before I landed the next big job, I did certain things. I drank a whole bunch of martinis at the Red Cat around the corner from my apartment on West 23rd Street in Chelsea. I did a whole bunch of Barre Method classes because if I was going to be unemployed, I was going to look good. And I made a whole bunch of chocolate chip cookies in my quest to perfect them. Thirty-eight different batches, in fact. A tweak here, a tweak there. And then, the sea salt."

I thought that these cookies were absolutely delicious. They are similar to my *Almost* Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe, which is my go-to, never-fail, no-chill recipe.

Would I make these cookies again? Absolutely. Should you try this recipe? Obviously!

As always, I'll share the recipe and include any modifications that I made at the end of the post.

Jump to:

• What Makes This Recipe a Keeper
• 🥣 Ingredients
• 👩‍🍳 Directions
• 🍪 Storage Tips
• 🗒 Brandy's Notes
• Common Questions
• Martha-Stewart-Fired-Me Chocolate Chip Cookies

What Makes This Recipe a Keeper

• Flavor burst: Most famous cookie recipes call for unsalted butter. I ALWAYS bake with salted butter and was pleasantly surprised to see that this recipe uses salted butter too. It really is superior, I said what I said. The cookies are also topped with flaky sea salt before baking which adds an additional burst of flavor.
• Lots of chocolate: This recipe calls for 1 ½ bags of chocolate chips or chocolate chunks. I used both. Most recipes call for half of a bag to a bag.
• Chilling Options: It is recommended to chill these cookies for 24-48 hours for the best flavor. You can also skip this step completely and bake straight from the bowl. See my notes for a meet-in-the-middle alternative.

🥣 Ingredients

• Salted Butter: Yes, salted butter. Go ahead and skip using unsalted butter if that's your go-to for baking. You won't be sorry.
• Dark brown AND light brown sugar: Dark brown sugar has more molasses and adds a boost of flavor. You can use them interchangeably, however. Use what you have on hand.
• Granulated Sugar: adds a crisp edge to chocolate chip cookies while the brown sugar creates a chewy center.
• Eggs: for richness and texture.
• Vanilla Extract: for flavor. This recipe calls for twice as much vanilla extract compared to other recipes. Here is my method for making your own vanilla extract.
• Flour: basic all purpose flour works great for this recipe.
• Baking Soda, Baking Powder, and Salt: for leavening and flavor.
• Chocolate Chips or Chunks: you can use semisweet chocolate chips, semisweet chocolate chunks, or a combination of both! I had half of a bar of semisweet chocolate that I chopped up and added to the chocolate chips.
• Flaky Sea Salt: Topping each cookie dough ball with flaky sea salt adds a boost of flavor. Highly recommend!

👩‍🍳 Directions

1. You'll start by creaming the butter and sugars together for a full 3 minutes. Once fluffy, you'll add the eggs and vanilla and mix for an additional 2 minutes.
2. The dry ingredients are mixed together in a separate bowl and then slowly added to the wet ingredients.
3. After the chocolate chips are mixed in the dough is chilled for up to 48 hours (see notes).
4. Scoop the dough and bake 6-8 cookies on each cookie sheet. Sprinkle each cookie dough ball with flaky sea salt before baking.
5. The cookies are baked at 360 degrees for 10-11 minutes. After coming out of the oven, go ahead and slam the baking sheet against the counter to flatten the cookies (this creates a chewy center).
6. Allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

🍪 Storage Tips

Store cooled cookies in an airtight container for up to 3 days at room temperature. Cookies can also be stored in the freezer. Freeze on a tray for an hour, then transfer to freezer bags.

🗒 Brandy's Notes

Here are the things I noted as I baked these cookies. Take it as you will, Sarah made 38 batches before settling on her final recipe, so she obviously knows what she is doing.

Ingredients

I had both dark brown sugar and light brown sugar on hand, so that's what I used, but I wouldn't make a special trip to the store to buy dark brown sugar if you don't have any.

Chilling

It is recommended to chill these cookies for 24-48 hours for the best flavor. However, I made some after chilling for 1-2 hours, and some after chilling 8 hours, and didn't think the extra chill time was worth the effort (texture or flavor-wise), so I did not chill the cookies for the full 24-28 hours. I've made A LOT of chocolate chip cookies over the years and have only found chilling chocolate chip cookie dough to be beneficial if it is a sticky dough or made with melted butter/oil. Even then, I typically only chill for 1-2 hours. I'll leave it up to you to decide for yourself, as this is a highly debated topic.

Baking

The recipe says to bake the cookies for 10 minutes. 11-12 minutes was the sweet spot for the batches that I made, but that could be because I used a regular cookie scoop (2 Tbsp.), which is slightly larger than the recommended size (the size of a quarter).

Slamming the Pan

After baking, I slammed the pan on the counter ONE TIME, and the cookies were perfect. The recipe states to slam the pan multiple times. If you chilled the dough 48 hours this might be beneficial, but for those who chilled the cookie dough for 2 hours it is not necessary to slam the pan more than once.

Shaping the Cookies

For cookies that weren't perfectly round, I used the glass technique to reshape the hot cookies as soon as they came out of the oven. You can also reshape with a large biscuit cutter.

Directions: Turn a glass upside down. It should be slightly larger than the cookie so that it covers it completely. Place the lip over a cookie. Holding the bottom of the glass, quickly work it in circular motions.

Common Questions