Levain Bakery Chocolate Chip Cookies; learn how to make gigantic soft and chewy cookies crammed with melting chocolate chips and crunchy walnuts, in the style of New York’s Levain Bakery!
You would probably roll your eyes at me if I told you that a single cookie could serve 2 people, right?
I felt the same. That is, until I saw the Levain Bakery Chocolate Chip Cookies.
“Nestled in New York City’s Upper West Side, Levain headquarters is a cozy neighborhood bakery where locals are greeted by name. A steady stream of loyal regulars stand side by side with tourists, eager to sample the legendary baked goods. From an inventive array of rustic breads to the world-famous six-ounce chocolate chip walnut cookie, everything is baked on-site, fresh every day from the finest natural ingredients.”
Sadly, I’ve never had the chance to visit Levain, or New York at all for that matter. However, after my surprising success at recreating the glory of the Momofuku Milk Bar Birthday Cake, I figured I could try bring New York City to my little Scottish seaside kitchen once more and recreate them myself!
The Levain Bakery chocolate chip cookies went viral a year or two ago. From Buzzfeed Food to Insider, every big social media outlet was sharing them in awe. No one could get over the SIZE of these things. Each one bigger than your whole hand and heavier than your youngest family member. These cookies are thick and heavy, with a crisp golden brown exterior and an utterly divine soft and chewy melting centre. Every bite is heady with the scent of brown sugar, the richness of melted chocolate, the satisfying crunch of toasted nuts and the dense butteriness of soft cookie dough.
The main interest that I have in these cookies, aside from the sheer gluttony of the portion size, is whether something that large could actually taste good. We’ve all seen ridiculous giant foods before on TV and online but I’m never convinced that the flavour would live up to the publicity. It was time to test that theory.
Click here to see exactly how I made and taste tested these giant Levain Bakery chocolate chip cookies on my YouTube channel!
After some examination of several of “copycat” recipes I found online, I concocted a recipe to try out myself. Converting cups to grams, testing the dough both chilled or room temperature, and tweaking the ingredients juuuuuust a little bit, I created the cookies you can see pictured.
The traditional Levain recipe uses walnuts, I only had pecans to hand and honestly, I prefer the flavour and texture of pecans anyway! I also used some good quality dark chocolate chips rather than the American “semi-sweet” variety. I chose to chill the dough before baking, as I always do when making cookies, as it lends a better texture and more full flavour. However, the rest is all pretty close to the original from what I can gather, including the fact they apparently don’t use any vanilla extract.
The result of this little homemade experiment was pretty damn good. Crisp edges, gooey insides, an obscene amount of chocolate, it was never going to be bad, right?
You can see my full reaction in the video, but these were delicious. They weren’t quite perfect in my opinion, my tastes would have liked a little more salt and to add that vanilla extract, but it was a great cookie nonetheless. I must say too, while the prospect of a giant cookie is a beautiful thing, I don’t know if these were crazy good enough to be as legendary as they are? Don’t get me wrong, they tasted great, but I’ve definitely had better baked goods. Obviously, that might have just been a case of mine not tasting as good though!
Either way, after a few tweaks, the recipe below will give you what is apparently an authentic taste of Upper West New York. Use it to create your own Levain Bakery chocolate chip cookies and see what you think!
Levain Bakery Chocolate Chip Cookies! (how to)
Levain Bakery Chocolate Chip Cookies; learn how to make gigantic soft and chewy cookies crammed with melting chocolate chips and crunchy walnuts, in the style of New York’s Levain Bakery!
Notes
BE A MAVERICK: if you prefer another kinds of nuts, feel free to use peanuts or hazelnuts for added flavour
Ingredients
- 220g (14 ½ tbsp) soft butter
- 200g (1 cup) soft light brown sugar
- 100g (½ cup) caster sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 400g (3 cups) plain flour
- 1 tbsp cornflour
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- Pinch of salt
- 300g (1 ⅔ cups) milk or dark chocolate chips
- 200g (1 ½ cups) walnuts or pecans, roughly chopped
Instructions
- Preheat your oven – 220 C / 200 C fan / 400 F / gas mark 6 – and line two medium/large baking trays with greaseproof paper.
- In a large mixing bowl, mix together the butter and sugars until smooth and combined.
- Add the eggs to the mixture, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each one.
- Stir in the flour, cornflour, bicarbonate of soda and salt until just combined into a thick dough.
- Stir in chocolate chips and nuts until evenly dispersed.
- Chill the dough in the fridge for 1-2 hours.
- Using your hands, separate the cookie dough into 6-8 large lumps on your prepared trays.
- If you like a nice, round cookie like the ones pictured, shape them into roll balls. If you don’t mind a rustic look, simply leave them as they are!
- Bake for 10-13 minutes or until golden brown, and crisp on top.
- Once baked, remove from the oven and allow them to cool completely on their trays, they will need about 10 minutes to firm up before you can taste one!
- Enjoy!
Hi Kelly, really loved your video on the cookies and tried to make them, but smaller (around 60g). The taste was absolutely heavenly, but the texture was not even close to what I saw on your video. The inside was ever so slightly underdone and the outside was not as crispy. I baked them right out the fridge for 13mins at 180C (with the fan).
Hope you can help =)
Hi Meshan, thanks for your comment and I’m glad you enjoyed the flavour! The only thing I can think that may have caused the texture issue is the oven temperature? The recipe above sets out that 10-13 minutes at 200C is best for a fan oven, they need a nice high heat to achieve that crispiness, so perhaps 180C was too low. I hope that helps!
Hi Kelly,
Would love to try this recipe but do you have any suggestions on a substitute for eggs as my mom is allergic to them but loves cookies.
Hi Vartika,
Personally I’ve never tried this recipe without eggs before. However I have made egg-free cookies in past using either oat milk or a soy-based yoghurt, if either of those would be a solution for you? I would typically use about 50g of either to replace each egg.
Applesauce
Hi Kelly,
I tried to make these cookies the other week with a similar recipe, however they spread out more than I would’ve liked. Is this because you need a hefty amount of dough per cookie, or that there could’ve been too much air in it, or even because I used cold cubed butter (which is what others have recommended using)?
Thanks!
Hi Jemma. Honestly I’m not sure I can fairly give advice on someone else’s recipe. The cookies in THIS recipe use a large amount of flour and are also chilled, both of these factors prevent the cookies from spreading out.
Typically, using a large amount of butter and sugar can also cause excess spreading, but like I said I wouldn’t feel fair to comment on another recipe!
I hope this helps somewhat 🙂
Hi Kelly, I have not yet had the chance to bake the cookies but your recipe sounds really delicious. I can’t eat much of the sweets so this cookie would last me probably 3-4days as I would just Chip away at it. The one thing I like very much as opposed to the Levain Bakery is it’s not all nuts, just walnuts. I prefer, like you to have the Pecans, just don’t follow behind the truckers and pick up a bottle marked PeeCans on it by mistake! Yes, the crazy Seattle rain has gone to me brain!
But yes, I do love Oatmeal and Haselnut or even Macadamia nut cookies, but if you make the Oatmeal with Macadamia Nuts, I cutback about 1/4 cup of oats and add Desiccated or sweetened cocoanut. I prefer the desiccated cocoanut myself and since I have to watch my levels, I will wait to fix what I want rather than take what is ready at that moment.
I am not much of a Maverick myself but in my working days I always baked cookies for me workmates at hospital laboratory and none ever became a patient and they always came back for more. I was encouraged to start a cookie shop in our little town but I would have to sell a lot of cookies to make enough cookie money to start up a business. It’s one thing to bake and donate but when you put your collection box out for donation, the cookies are gone and so is the box, but it was empty anyway. After a while, it just gets to darned expensive to cover the cost of ingredients to continue baking and everyone tells me to stand next to the cookies and tell the takers they need to help by paying for ingredients by the form of MONEY! One lady brought me a 1k sack of flour. She really thought she was helping and I thanked her in kind. She was a young intern and only about 22 or 23 years old. But unlike the other people that had the money to help out, she did help where the others did nothing but cram the cookies in their mouths before someone else could get to it. I learned a lot about business that time of my working life, and boy did I go on and on, sorry. Back to the recipe at hand, I would rather use the really good Chocolate Chunks as opposed to the chips, personal choice or I have melted down chocolate baking bar and put finely chopped Pecans in the chocolate and poured it onto the countertop lined with Parchment paper. The chocolate is spread very thin with the Nuts and the table was so it took no time at all to set up. Then pick up the parchment breaking chocolate into pieces and add this to cookies. It is great. It also is wonderful in Homemade Ice Cream. The chocolate has a slight crunch because of the cold and the Pecans or Macadamia Nuts ,candied or just salted also adds a nice texture. Add a little Homemade Caramel sauce and you are up and happy for days! We crud, there I go again, I had better log off of here before I really get going.
I will look forward to reading more from you. I don’t have a blog, just a blah, blah,blah! Have a Super-Great evening from my near neck of the woods, Ireland. Jill from Port Orchard, Washington USA
This looks so good! Will try making them on the weekend – just wondering though: could I use less sugar and keep the rest of the ingredients the same? If so, what would you say is a recommended amount that will still settle with this recipe, but won’t have me using so much sugar? Thank you!
Hello Stav, I really wouldn’t recommend reducing the sugar by any more than 20g as it will noticeably affect the taste, texture and colour of the cookies!
Hello! I want to try your recipe!
Is corn flour ( corn starch) necessary? Can I subsitute it for any different type of starch? Thank you!!!!
Hi! I want to make this recipe but I’ve never heard of castor sugar? Is that regular granulated sugar or powdered sugar? Please help!
Hello Ashley! Caster sugar is what we in the UK call sugar that is finer than granulated sugar but not quite as fine as powdered sugar. If you are based in the USA/Canada it may be called Superfine Sugar? If not, granulated should produce a very similar result!
First time commenting – really liked the video
Was wondering; you recommend more salt and vanilla extract. At what stage of the recipe would you recommend putting vanilla extract in, and how much?
Good luck with the channel in the future!
Hello Aylwyn! I would recommend adding the vanilla to the butter and sugar stage, and the salt at the end. Thank you very much, and enjoy! 🙂
Thanks for replying. What volume of vanilla extract? And when you say salt at the end, do you mean sprinkle the cookies with rock salt once out of the oven, or adding a teaspoon of kosher salt into the finished dough before going into the fridge?
Thanks in advance
Hello again. I would add 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, and I would add some regular salt to the dough before chilling (we don’t have kosher salt where I’m from!). Hope that helps? 🙂
This absolutely helps! 🙂 Really appreciate it. Gonna make these on Friday, so I shall let you know how I get on
Also, kosher salt is just what’s known as fine salt, rather than rock salt, in the UK (since I’m a Glaswegian, probably should’ve said that in the first place! Apologies)
Hi
Mine burned all from the bottom on gas mark 6 and colour of my cookie don’t look like yours helpppp what flour do you use and brown sugar and butter :)) any tips
Thank you 🙂
Hi Emma, I’m sorry to hear that! I typically use a fairly cheap supermarket own-brand flour, Billington’s sugar and Graham’s butter, nothing fancy. How long did you bake them for? Was the dough chilled before baking?
Hi
Should I put two tray toghter yeh dough was fully chilled
Hello,
I’ve tried too many recipes, and today I did the first time with your recipe of levain bakery cookies. I didn’t use any walnuts or any nuts. Do I need to increase flour weight? The dough is a little liquid and sticky. I put it in the fridge and bake in the morning. ı baked them 200 C for 8-9 minutes. I’m waiting for your advice. Thank you.
Hello there, thanks for your comment. Using the measurements in this recipe the dough should not be liquid or sticky, it should be very thick and stiff. Did the cookies turn out ok once baked?