Soft, Chewy, And Oversized: Copycat Subway Footlong Cookie Recipe

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If you've ever wished for Subway's cookies to be bigger, the sandwich chain fulfilled that wish when it launched Sidekicks in 2024, offering Cinnabon churros, Auntie Anne's pretzels, and, of course, Subway's chocolate chip cookies in footlong form. Can you imagine 12 inches of irresistibly soft, chewy, chocolate chip goodness? If that sounds tempting, you don't have to visit Subway to enjoy this uniquely shaped cookie. Recipe developer Michelle Bottalico has created a copycat recipe with the same fluffy texture and richness for you to try at home. 

Making the cookie dough itself is pretty straightforward, but for the cookies to take a footlong shape, Bottalico took clever aluminum foil kitchen hacks to the next level by crafting baking pans out of heavy-duty aluminum foil. The 3-by-12-inch pans are a unique size not sold in stores. Although making the pans adds to the prep time, you'll be rewarded with cookies that have the same long, narrow shape sold at Subway, making this recipe stand out from other cookie recipes. Because of the cookies' fun shape, we recommend sharing them, as each cookie is made from half a batch of cookie dough. If this all sounds intriguing, but the idea of making pans from scratch is causing you to hesitate, Bottalico shares other options below.

For this recipe, you will first need unsalted butter. Make sure to soften it before starting the recipe. Have packed brown sugar on hand as well. It doesn't matter if it's dark or light brown sugar — either works. You will also need granulated sugar, a large egg, vanilla extract, baking soda, salt, all-purpose flour, and chocolate chips.

In a mixing bowl, add the unsalted butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar. Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugars by beating on medium until creamy, about 2 minutes.

Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until combined.

Mix in the baking soda and salt. Add the flour a little at a time, stirring until just combined and without overmixing. 

Set aside 2 tablespoons of chocolate chips. Fold the rest of the chocolate chips into the dough. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

In the meantime, start making the first cookie pan. Cut out 2 8x18-inch rectangles from heavy-duty aluminum foil.

Fold each rectangle in half lengthwise twice, creating 2 2x18-inch rectangles.

Take 3 inches on each end and fold to create 2 90-degree angles on each piece.

Create a box shape with the two rectangle pieces by standing them up lengthwise, parallel to each other, with the folded ends lined up.

Cut out 2 rectangles, 3 inches wide and at least 6 inches long, from heavy-duty aluminum foil. Wrap each around a short end of the box to hold the folded pieces together.

Tear off a sheet of foil large enough to cover the box with a few overlapping inches on all sides and place the box in the center.

Cut out a square from each of the 4 corners of the large sheet, making sure to leave about ½ inch of space between the box corners and the cut-out areas.

Fold the 4 sides of the large sheet into the box to complete the pan, pressing it along the sides and bottom. The finished pan should measure 3x12 inches.

Cut out a 3×17-inch and an 8×12-inch piece of parchment paper. Line the 3x17-inch parchment paper along the pan vertically, so that it goes up the two short sides of the pan. Use the 8x12-inch piece to line the pan horizontally.

Repeat steps 5-13 to make a second cookie pan.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Once the dough is done chilling, remove it from the refrigerator and let it sit at room temperature for 10 minutes. Divide the dough into the two foil pans, spreading and flattening it with the back of a spoon or your fingers. Press the long sides of the pans to restore their original rectangular shape.

Place the filled cookie pans onto a sheet pan and bake for 22 to 24 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from the oven. The cookies will look undercooked.

Sprinkle the reserved 2 tablespoons of chocolate chips on top of the cookies for garnish. Press them lightly into the cookies with the back of a fork.

Set the pans on a wire rack to cool completely, about 1 hour. Do not remove the cookies from the pans while warm to avoid breaking.

Once completely cooled, remove the cookies from the pans and serve.

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The makeshift foil pans allow you to create long, narrow 3-by-12-inch cookies like Subway's, but fear not if you want to skip the craft session. The cookies would be equally delicious if they were a different size or shape. 

You can find narrow 12-inch loaf pans for purchase, but the smallest width is typically 4 inches. If you already have a standard loaf pan in your kitchen, you can use that too. Common loaf pan sizes are 4-by-8 inches, 4.5-by-8.5 inches, and 5-by-9 inches, but you can make them narrower with a simple hack. Take a long sheet of aluminum foil and cut or fold it so the width is the same as the length of your pan. Roll the sheet up into a narrow cylinder and place it along the wall of one long side of the pan. Then line the pan with parchment paper and scoop the cookie dough into the narrowed space.

Smaller loaf pans mean you can fill more pans and create more cookies, which will be nice and narrow, but not as long. This recipe will fill three 4-by-8-inch loaf pans when they're filled with the rolled-up foil to have three inches of usable width.

Chilling dough may seem like a waste of time, especially when the chilling time is an hour and you can't wait to taste the results of your hard work. However, this additional step is important. One reason to chill dough is to prevent the cookies from spreading too much while baking, resulting in flat or shapeless cookies. Chilling hardens the butter in the dough, so the butter takes longer to melt and spread once it hits the oven. That means other ingredients, like baking powder, baking soda, and eggs, will have more time to leaven the cookies. Ideally, the butter and other ingredients will work at a balanced pace, resulting in cookies that have the intended height.

The footlong cookies in this recipe aren't shaped as single cookies. They're cooked within the confines of a rectangular pan. The spreading discussed above doesn't apply, so is chilling still important? While you can get away with not chilling these, there are other reasons chilling is a good idea. Chilling makes the cookies brown more and helps them develop more flavor. They will taste better and be crispier on the outside and chewier on the inside.

Not all cookies require chilling, though. The types of cookie dough you shouldn't refrigerate include dough for cookies that are meant to be thin and crispy or more cakelike, so chilling would actually be counterproductive here.

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