15+ Mix-In Ideas for Chocolate Chip Cookies
If you have a favorite chip cookie recipe, but feel like switching things up a bit, try these easy mix-in ideas for chocolate chip cookies! You can swap out the chocolate chips for any number of tasty ingredients. Try ideas like freeze-dried strawberries, peanut butter chips, marshmallows or even potato chips or pretzels!
I love creating new recipes in my kitchen. Sometimes it’s a totally new recipe, sometimes it’s as simple as swapping one ingredient for another. I hope you enjoy this brainstorm session with easy swap ideas to elevate or switch up a classic chocolate chip cookie recipe.
If you have a favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, use that as your starting place. I use the base recipe from my Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookies frequently. When it’s time to add the chocolate chips, try one of these new ingredients or ingredient combos instead!
These are brainstorming ideas so while I haven’t tested each combination, I’m confident they will be pretty successful because we aren’t changing tons of things about the recipe here. Just subbing in some different dry mix-ins for a flavor shake up.
Note that these types of swaps work best when swapping in something similar to chocolate chips. If you try to add chopped fresh fruit for instance, that wouldn’t work. The high moisture content of the fruit would totally change the recipe.
Different Mix-Ins for Chocolate Chip Cookies
If you are looking for a way to freshen up your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe–or just create something new–get some inspiration from this list of chocolate chip swaps!
Here’s over 20 ideas for what to swap out semi-sweet chocolate chips with:
- Butterscotch Chips, Peanut Butter Chips, or White Chocolate Chips: Simply replace the chocolate chips in the recipe for an equal amount of any of these chips.
- Berries and Cream: Crush a few handfuls of freeze-dried strawberries to mix in. Also swap the chocolate chips for white chips.
- Chocolate and Pecan: Replace 1/3 of the chocolate chips with chopped pecans. Gently toast them first for some amazing flavor.
- Cranberry White Chocolate: Replace the chocolate chips with white chocolate chips and reduce the overall amount slightly. Add a scoop of dried cranberries and stir it up.
- Chopped Apricot: Try dried apricots too! Chop them up and add to the dough along with semi-sweet chocolate chips. Add a sprinkle of sea salt when they come out of the oven.
- Trail Mix: Use a mix of toasted pecans, dried blueberries (or raisins), semi-sweet chocolate chips, dried cranberries and shredded coconut for a trail mix cookie you will love. Add as much as the total amount of chocolate chips that the recipe calls for. Example: if it calls for two cups of chips, then use two cups total of the above mix of ingredients.
- S’mores: Use mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, and a handful of crushed graham crackers (don’t pulverize them, just break into smaller pieces) to create a s’mores style cookie.
- Peanut Butter Cup: Chop up your favorite peanut butter cups (I love the Trader Joe’s ones and Reese’s Thins) and add to the cookies. Save some pieces to stick into the tops of the hot cookies when they come out of the oven.
- Candy Bar Cookies: Chop up a mix of leftover Halloween candy bars (stick to chocolate-based bars) and replace the chocolate chips with a healthy dose of chewy chocolate candy –yum!
- Caramel Chips: Use a caramel-flavored chip such as Toll House Caramel Morsels.
- Toffee Chips: Replace chocolate chips with toffee chips such as Heath English Toffee Bits.
- Bacon, Caramel, Salt: Replace the chocolate chips with caramel chips and add a handful of chopped cooked bacon. Top cookies out of the oven with more bacon pieces or a few flakes of sea salt.
- Chocolate Lover’s Chocolate: This one is really simple. Instead of using one single variety of semi-sweet chips, mix several brands of semi-sweet chips together. The variety of chocolate blends will give your cookies so much depth of flavor!
- Mint Cookies: Use peppermint chips, mint chips, or chopped Andes mints for a mint-flavored cookie.
- Peanut Butter Pretzel: Use a combination of crushed pretzel pieces and peanut butter chips for a fun variation on chocolate chip cookies.
- Potato Chip Cookies: Keep the chocolate chips, but slightly reduce the amount and add a scoop of crushed potato chips into the mix!
- Chocolate Chip Cookie Cookies: Crush crunchy chocolate chip cookies into pieces (such as Tate’s Bake Shop). Use half crushed cookies and half mini chocolate chips in place of the semi-sweet chocolate chips.
- Biscoff Cookies: break up Biscoff cookies and replace the chocolate chips with crushed cookies.
- Chocolate Covered Candies: Such as M&M’s or Reese’s Pieces. The mini variety of M&Ms is also perfect.
- Cookies and Cream: Add chopped up Oreos and white chips!
- Salted Chocolate: Keep the semi-sweet chips and add a pinch of flaky sea salt (I use Maldon Sea Salt Flakes) to the tops of the cookies immediately after removing from the oven.
