Chocolate chip pudding cookies are tender and soft and stay that way for days after you make them. The dough is made with instant pudding mix, which gives the cookies a wonderfully soft texture. If you love soft chocolate chip cookies you have to try this recipe.
One of my favorite cookies to make is chocolate chip pudding cookies. They have a really soft texture from vanilla pudding mix that is in the dough.
They are great for gifting because they keep their soft texture for days. I make them all year round and often give away batches to our neighbors, friends, and family.
I have a lot of chocolate chip cookie recipes, but I’ve been making this version for a long time. Long before I started blogging and trying out so many different recipes. I always come back to them because they’re easy, delicious, and keep so well.
Pudding Cookies
For these cookies, dry vanilla pudding mix is added to the dough. The ingredients in the mix give the cookies flavor, but it’s the cornstarch in the mix that gives them a really soft texture. Other soft cookies sometimes harden after a day or so, but with these pudding cookies, they stay soft for a really long time.
Ingredients
- All-purpose flour
- Baking soda
- Softened unsalted butter
- Brown sugar
- White sugar
- Instant vanilla pudding mix
- Eggs
- Vanilla extract
- Semisweet chocolate chips
Recipe Steps
Sift the flour and baking soda in a medium bowl. In a separate bowl, cream the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the dry pudding mix and then stir in the eggs and vanilla.
Add the flour to the butter mixture and, once blended, stir in the chocolate chips.
Make 1-inch cookie balls and place them on a baking sheet. Bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes at 350°F or until the edges are golden brown.
Store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature.
I made these yesterday and they turned out amazing! I halved the recipe because I didn’t need as many as I assumed you did based on the amounts of ingredients. I also ended up using butterscotch pudding because it was all I had and they still came out delicious! Love how soft they are. Thanks for sharing a wonderful recipe. This might be my new go-to cookie recipe!
Mmm, butterscotch pudding sounds like it would make these even better
I made these today… the cookies hardly spread at all. Also they are in desperate need of some salt. It tasted too floury because there was no salt in it to accentuate the other flavors. They taste good, and I’ll make them again, but I’ll add salt next time. I’m not sure how much these cookies were meant to spread. They look like biscuits.
The cookies should have no problems spreading…Have you checked your baking soda? Also maybe try making your dough balls bigger, maybe more around 1 1/2 inch in diameter.
Hi! I made these tonight! They are wonderful!!! I did have to add more baking time. Instead of 10 to 12 minutes, I had to do 17 minutes. Maybe because its a gas oven. I used only 2 bags (2 cups) of chocolate chips. Worked out well. The cookies do have a strong hint of vanilla…so I call them “soft chocolate and vanilla cookies”. Thanks for sharing the recipe. I will for sure make them again.
Glad they turned out well!
I have also been asked to try chocolate pudding with peanut butter chips. I’ll let you know how they turn out 🙂
Mmm, sounds like a delicious combination!
I found these on Pintrest around Christmas and have made them for every family gathering since; we have 36 immediate family members (+ 1 more on the way) living in a 5 mile radius, and we get together often. This makes a lot of cookies and they are amazing. They are the #1 requested dessert. Thank you so much for sharing!!!
I always get rave reviews when I bake these for friends and family. So glad yours enjoyed too. And wow, so many family members nearby!!
I want to make these cookies but dont have instant. I have cook and serve pudding. Will that work?
Sorry, I am not familiar with cook and serve pudding, so I’m not sure.
Want to make these. But dont want them to taste like pudding.but want a soft!!!cookie thanks.
The cookies come out soft but they dont taste like pudding. You only add in the pudding mix dry. It’s like how a lot of the cake mix companies now add pudding mix to their batter as well.
Have you replacing the vanilla pudding with chocolate pudding?
Yes, it will turn the cookies a much darker color and you can taste the chocolate pudding. It still tastes good but I prefer the vanilla.
Do you leave the pudding mix as dry or make actual pudding?
You leave it dry. You’re only using the dry mix, not actually make pudding with it. Hope you enjoy!
Hi Kirbie,
They absolutely were still soft… the batter was sticky and harder to work with but no stress if you’re out of pudding mix:)
Thanks for posting thee best cookie recipe EVER!
Carey
I am going to have to try this no pudding mix version next time. thanks!
I make these wonderful cookies every week for a little diner I own… I can’t seem to keep the cookie jar full!
I went to make my weekly batch today and realized I was out of pudding mix…ugh! I didn’t know if I should go ahead or not. So… I did and they were equally as wonderful! I still followed the recipe minus the mix and they are seriously delicious!
Cheers
Glad to know it works even without the pudding mix, though do they stay soft without the mix?
First batch in the oven right now and I am finding it hard to keep my fingers out of the uncooked dough! I am expecting amazingness!!!
Thanks a lot. I think I found something here: https://www.food.com/recipe/vanilla-pudding-mix-159947. The only problems is that it calls for dry milk powder, which is hard to find as well… LOL… Anyway, I’ll figure something out!! Thanks again! 😀
Oh interesting! yes this might work, though that’s too bad dry milk powder is hard to find. They sell it on the King Arthur website but i don’t know if they ship to Italy.
I live in Italy and I can’t find instant vanilla pudding. What could I use? COuld I replace it with some pudding recipe from scratch? I’d really like to try this recipe out!! Thanks. Emma
Hi Emma, unfortunately from scratch pudding recipes won’t work because the instant vanilla pudding mix is actually a dry powdered ingredient. I’m not sure how else to help you out because I don’t know what you can use instead. Maybe someone else reading this post can advise you.
Omg, these are amazing! I love baking, but can’t master a decent cookie. Until now. Perfection. And I’m difficult to please. Thank you so much for the recipe;)
Oh that’s wonderful to hear!
Hey! This recipe looks really interesting! I have never found a chocolate chip one that always works for me. How many dozen will this make?
Thanks!
It makes about four dozen. Hope you like it!
For the vanilla pudding mix, did you mean 2 3.4oz packages or for the total of the mix to be 3.4 oz??
It’s supposed to be 2 packages that are each 3.4 oz. hope this helps!
Is it nessecary to sift? If so what is the easiest way?
The flour itself does not need to be sifted, but you do need to sift/mix it together with the baking soda. I usually just put the two into a bowl and mix a few times with a wire whisk.
Would the recipe work the same if I used Chocolate pudding instead of Vanilla?
It won’t be exactly the same. It’ll taste more like a chocolate cookie rather than a chocolate chip cookie and the dough will be much darker. You definitely would taste the chocolate from the chocolate pudding. I’ve done it before and I don’t love it as much because it’s not as chocolatey as a real chocolate cookie, so it’s just somewhere stuck in the middle in terms of flavors.
I’m not going to give up, I will try them again and let you know after I change out my baking soda. My grandma keeps saying I shouldn’t melt my butter, and that everything needs to be room temperature…
I soften the butter in the microwave but I don’t melt it completely. Softening it just helps it mix in better for this recipe, but yes definitely don’t completely have a liquid melted butter. Good luck!
Well, they are rock hard today.. Yesterday they almost tasted like a biscuit, not very sweet and the texture was off. The texture of the dough looked just about perfect. I measured everything perfectly. My first batch I rolled and baked- they didn’t flatten at all, they just look like balls of chocolate biscuit. My second batch I did everything the same except I flattened them, they seemed to work out a little better. And they took forever and a day to get golden.. Almost 20minutes. Maybe I’m just not cut out for baking 🙁
I’m sorry to hear that. The cookies should flatten out. I wonder how is your baking soda? Maybe it needs to be replaced? I’ve never had the cookies be hard…Hmm, I wish I could watch you making them so i know what is going wrong.
So, I am sure these cookies are amazing, but I am just a failure at baking 🙁
I am a great cook but I can’t seem to get baking down. I followed the recipe to a T and they just aren’t right, flat out not right. Ok flavor, Ok consitancy, but they look pretty.
I am not sure what I am doing wrong…
Normally it’s really hard to say what someone is doing wrong without actually being present there to watch them. But can you maybe give me more details so i can try to guess what went wrong? What exactly was wrong with the cookies? The taste, the texture?
Chocolates looks sooo yummy! I could just have a lot of those in one sitting.
Hey Kirbie,
I’m moving out to San Diego the 23rd and was upset about missing this bake sale so I sent my roommate in my place. He picked up a bag of your cookies (among many other things) and loved them. He wanted me to relay the message.
Thanks for taking the time to leave me a comment! I’ve been so curious as to who bought my stuff and if they enjoyed them!
The packaging is so cute! Must have taken a while to do it. 🙂
It did..I was surprised how long it took me to do 30 and I kept thinking how long it will take me to do wedding favors or name tags, etc.
These cookies look great! I think it is terrific that so many bloggers are participating in this bake sale! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to this year:-(
Aw, too bad. I’m sure there will be others for you to participate in. I was really surprised by how many bloggers volunteered their time and efforts.